Attorneys representing Michael Duane Zack, a convicted murderer, have taken their case to the U.S. Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to halt his scheduled execution on October 3rd. Earlier, Florida courts had rejected arguments that Zack should be spared due to his Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS).
In their plea to the U.S. Supreme Court, Zack’s legal team requested a stay of execution and submitted a petition urging the highest court to review the case’s critical issues. This move followed the Florida Supreme Court’s recent decision not to intervene in Zack’s execution for the 1996 murder of a woman in Escambia County.
Simultaneously, a panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a separate request for a stay of execution, which was based on the assertion that Zack had received an unfair state clemency process.
Zack’s lawyers argue that he should be shielded from execution due to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which he developed because his mother consumed alcohol during her pregnancy. They point to the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which deemed the execution of individuals with intellectual disabilities unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
The recent request to the U.S. Supreme Court contends that “the medical community now recognizes that the unique, cognitive, practical, and social impairments inherent to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (are) indistinguishable from those of Intellectual Developmental Disability.”
The petition further states that “Mr. Zack has presented evidence of his prenatal alcohol exposure to the full extent allowed by then-contemporaneous scientific legal and legal standards.” It argues that evolving standards of decency have reached a point where Zack’s FAS disability should afford him the same protections as established in the Atkins case.
However, the Florida Supreme Court rejected these arguments, citing a lack of timeliness and procedural barriers. Justice Renatha Francis, who authored the opinion, noted that Zack had raised intellectual disability claims repeatedly since 2002, and the facts surrounding these claims were well-known for over two decades.
Michael Duane Zack, 54, was sentenced to death for the murder of Ravonne Smith, whom he met at a bar where she worked, and killed in her Escambia County home. He was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery with a firearm, and sexual battery in September 1997. Zack is also serving a life sentence for the murder of Laura Rosillo in Okaloosa County shortly before the Smith killing.
Zack’s legal team has pursued cases in both state and federal courts to prevent his execution, focusing on issues related to the state’s clemency process and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. They argued that Zack’s 2014 clemency interview did not allow him to provide updated medical evidence about FAS.
However, both U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel declined to issue a stay, citing a lack of explicit rules preventing supplemental materials about FAS from being submitted in the clemency process.