Putnam County: Prosecutors seek death against Dimeco Henderson for non-homicide sex crimes
Putnam County prosecutors officially announced their intent to seek the death penalty against Henderson under Florida’s 2023 legislation allowing the death penalty for non-homicide child sex crimes.
Dimeco Henderson, a registered sex offender, is charged with sex crimes against a 10-year-old girl and 13-year-old girl—both his fiance’s daughters.
Putnam County prosecutors officially announced their intent to seek the death penalty against Henderson under Florida’s 2023 legislation allowing the death penalty for non-homicide child sex crimes. (TFDP covered the legislative process leading to the enactment of this legislation, all of which can be found in the TFDP archive.)
On June 19, State attorneys filed a Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty against Henderson.
The State’s Notice lists three aggravating factors that the State intends to prove at trial:
First toe in the water... on the issue of non-unanimity
I am a retired DP trial lawyer from the 1980s New Orleans Harry Connick regime. I took my share of lumps from his prosecutorial staff who hid the evidence ball, and did other things to reinforce the saying that our OIDP office said: "If you are poor, black, or a past criminal, you are in trouble".
What we didn't have was the breached bulwark of unanimity in verdicts of death - which saved a lot of lives worth saving, so a lot of effort went into convincing the finders of fact that this life on trial, despite all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, was still sacred. I would close the murder trial penalty phase argument with "I and my client understand that you are angry that a human life was taken. Why do you then want to take another one, if life is so sacred?"
So, now we are one more set of steps down that steep trail to moral perdition: killing for those who, for whatever reason, are found guilty of (today) "non-homicide child sex crimes". That is, killing for NON-killing crimes proved beyond reasonable doubt. Where, prithee, does it stop? Legislation is not sacred and what gives any of us the right to assume the pretention that it is?
In sum, the death penalty is an ugly carbuncle on the face of American justice and we are all complicit in trying to justify it, because over 1000 DP defendants have been exonerated since 1977 - - but some 1632 have paid the price to the executioner since that time.
This outrage has turned justice on its head. God have mercy on us all.
Phil Johnson
AF 11384275