WARRANT: Ford's petition fully briefed at SCOTUS
James Ford's execution is scheduled for February 13. This afternoon, Ford filed his Reply Brief at the U.S. Supreme Court, completing briefing.
James Ford’s execution is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 13, 2025—the first for the State in 2025.
Ahead of his execution, Ford filed a two-count successive motion for postconviction relief in the circuit court. After denying Ford’s request for an evidentiary hearing,1 the circuit court denied Ford’s motion. Ford appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, raising three claims. (More on Ford’s arguments in his Initial Brief here.) He also filed a motion to stay the execution and send the case back to the circuit court, which the Court denied. On Friday, the Court affirmed the circuit court’s denial of Ford’s claims.
Over the weekend, Ford filed a petition for a writ of certiorari and application for stay of execution at the U.S. Supreme Court.2 As of this afternoon, the briefing is complete.
Ford’s Reply
This afternoon, Ford filed his Reply in support of his petition.
Regarding the stay, the Reply says:
Florida’s compressed 33-day death warrant litigation schedule is completely insufficient to protect Ford’s constitutional rights. . . .
. . . .
Ford will be irreparably harmed if a stay is not granted. If this Court does not intervene by pausing Ford’s unnecessarily expedited warrant schedule, he faces the ultimate and final sanction of death when Florida executes him via lethal injection at 6:00pm on February 13, 2025. Both Florida and this Court have recognized that “execution is the most irremediable and unfathomable of penalties; that death is different.” Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 411 (1986) (citing Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 305 (1976)); see also Ocha v. State, 826 So. 2d 956, 964 (Fla. 2002) (“This Court has long adhered to the idea that [i]n the field of criminal law, there is no doubt that ‘death is different.’ ”); Swafford v. State, 679 So. 2d 736, 740 (Fla. 1996) (“[O]ur jurisprudence also embraces the concept that ‘death is different’ and affords a correspondingly greater degree of scrutiny to capital proceedings.”). Ford’s unnecessarily expedited warrant schedule simply does not honor our justice system’s acknowledgement that “death is different.” A stay is appropriate and necessary.
On the first issue presented in Ford’s petition regarding Florida’s conformity clause on the Eighth Amendment, the Reply argues:
This Court must intervene in this case. Sadly, Florida’s use of the conformity clause to abdicate all responsibility for considering and perpetuating evolving standards of decency undermines bedrock principles of federalism and state autonomy dating as far back as the Founding.
On the second issue related to Roper, the Reply argues:
Ford had a mind similar to that of a fourteen-year-old in 1997 when the capital offense was committed. Florida is not disputing that point. As thoroughly argued in Ford’s petition, evolving standards of decency dictate that this Court’s reasoning in Roper should and must be extended to categorically exclude individuals with a mental and developmental age less than age eighteen from the death penalty.
A full copy of the filings can be accessed on the Court’s website here.
TFDP Prior Coverage of the Ford Warrant
My thoughts are with everyone involved in the warrant- and execution-related process.