Danny Rolling

Healing

2008-07-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

"The death penalty is about revenge and hate, and revenge and hate is why my daughter and those 167 other people are dead today."

Bud Welch, father of Julie Marie Welch,
victim in the Oklahoma City bombing

"I have come to believe that the death penalty is not what will help me heal. Responding to one killing with another killing does not honor my daughter, nor does it help create the kind of society I want to live in, where human life and human rights are valued. I know that an execution creates another grieving family, and causing pain to another family does not lessen my own pain."

MVFHR board member, Vicki Schieber, testifying to the Subcommittee on the Constitution,
Civil Rights and Property Rights; Committee on the Judiciary; US Senate, February 2006

With killer executed, evidence to go up in flames

2008-06-22T14:49:00.001-07:00

Convicted and sentenced to death in the killings, the 52-year-old Rolling was executed in October 2006 at Florida State Prison near Raiford. The evidence, which had been stored away over the years as his case made its way through the appeals process, was made public this week.

The Alachua County Sheriff's Office will burn everything in the next two weeks, ensuring the items do not get into the hands of collectors, said Lt. Steve Maynard, a spokesman for the office.

"There is zero opportunity for anything here to be sold on eBay," he said.

Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell, Gainesville Police spokeswoman at the time of the murders, said she worked with the victims' family members to remove personal items such as checkbooks, jewelry and photographs.

She said she was glad to clear storage space of items that constitute one of the largest cases ever handled by the office.

"It feels good to have it taken care of and destroyed," she said.

Dianna Hoyt, stepmother of victim Christa Hoyt, said nothing would provide complete closure for families. But she said Rolling's execution has removed some of the pain from events that recall the murders.

"You can never have closure in the death of a loved one; you'll always remember that person," she said. "But now at least you know the terrible part is over with."

In August 1990, Rolling murdered five college students in their Gainesville apartments. The slain students were Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; Christa Hoyt, 18, of Archer; Manuel Taboada, 23, of Carol City; and Tracy Paules, 23, of Miami.

Their bodies were found over a three-day period at the start of the University of Florida's fall semester. The crimes and their gruesome nature -- some of the victims were mutilated and posed -- had students fleeing Gainesville and the news media descending upon the city.

Ten days after the killings, Rolling ended up in custody at the Marion County jail on robbery charges. It took another five months before police linked him to the killings through DNA evidence. During that period other suspects were investigated, including UF freshman Edward Humphrey.

Humphrey's fingernail scrapings and blood samples were among the remaining evidence. Scores of bags were filled with evidence that did not pan out, including a variety of knives.

"I think every knife that was lying in Gainesville was picked up and collected and returned to us," Hewitt said.

Rolling told police he disposed of a knife used in the murders in a barn on the UF campus. A video of an excavation of the site was among the evidence. The knife was never recovered.

A native of Shreveport, La., Rolling was a homeless drifter at the time of the killings. The evidence included a tent and other camping equipment recovered from the site where he lived in the woods behind what is now UF's Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

Among the items found at the site was an audio recording in which Rolling played guitar and concluded with these words: "Well, I'm gonna sign off for a little bit. I got something I gotta do."

The guitar was not recovered at the camp location, but tracked to a Sarasota man who had bought it from Rolling. The guitar was part of the remaining evidence.

Other items included a backpack found at a Mississippi campsite where Rolling stayed before committing a robbery there.

Rolling's crimes in other states were mostly limited to robberies and thefts, but were later found to include the August 1990 rape of a Sarasota woman and the November 1989 slayings of three Shreveport residents.

The Sarasota attack against Janet Frake occurred about a week before Rolling appeared in Gainesville. Frake was 30 at the time and lived alone. Rollins apparently entered her home through an unlocked window and waited inside for her.

"What I encountered that night was pure evil," Frake said in a 2006 interview. "That's what it was -- pure evil."

Also while in Sarasota, Rolling bought a pistol, jewelry and a pair of glasses that were found at his Gainesville campsite.

On Aug. 18, he checked into a Gainesville hotel -- eight days before the first of five bodies in the Gainesville murders was found.

As jury selection began in his murder trial in 1994, Rolling pleaded guilty.

He was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection, an event that attracted throngs of protesters and national media attention.

Rolling execution closes chapter of area history

2006-12-31T15:49:00.000-08:00

By NATHAN CRABBE

Sun staff writer

Danny Rolling is just a memory now.

More than 16 years ago, five college students were brutally slain in Gainesville during the first week of classes at the University of Florida. The crimes sent the community into a panic, and it would take nine anxious months before Rolling was publicly named as a suspect.

Long after he confessed and was sentenced to death, he would make headlines as his case crawled through the appeals process.

Now those stories will be fewer and Rolling will be discussed in the past tense.

"Instead of being a current event, it takes its place in local history," said Spencer Mann, who was spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriff's Office at the time of the murders. He now works for the State Attorney's Office and was a witness at Rolling's execution.

A 52-year-old native of Shreveport, La., Rolling was executed by lethal injection Oct. 25 at Florida State Prison near Raiford. The event attracted throngs of protesters and national media attention. The execution itself will be remembered for Rolling singing a hymn as his last statement and failing to apologize to his victims' families.

Dianna Hoyt, stepmother of victim Christa Hoyt, said even if Rolling would have apologized, she wouldn't have believed it was sincere. After years of dealing with appeals, she said the execution was a relief.

"The next day I woke up and I felt a tremendous burden had been lifted," she said.

She hopes the memory of Rolling will fade, but the community continues to remember the victims. The memorial wall on SW 34th Street provides a lasting reminder of their names: Sonja Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada.

Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach, and Powell, 17, of Jacksonville, were the first to be found slain. The UF freshmen were discovered in their Williamsburg Village apartment on SW 16th Street on Aug. 26, 1990, the Sunday before classes started.

The next day, officers found the body of Hoyt, 18, of Archer. An Alachua County Sheriff's Office records clerk, she was found in the duplex apartment on SW 24th Avenue where she lived alone.

Two days later, the bodies of Paules and Taboada, both 23 and high school friends from Miami, were discovered in their Gatorwood apartment off Archer Road.

The horrific nature of the killings, which involved the mutilation and posing of the victims, shocked the community and sent UF students fleeing for home. The town was soon filled with law enforcement officers and reporters from across the nation.

Initially suspecting a UF freshman who exhibited bizarre behavior, police eventually turned their attention to Rolling. Ten days after the killing, Rolling had ended up in custody on robbery charges in Marion County. His DNA was later compared to crime scene evidence, proving police had the right man.

In 1994, Rolling entered a guilty plea as jury selection began in his trial. Nonetheless, he would appeal his death sentence on a variety of grounds over the next dozen years.

Rolling's attorney, Baya Harrison, handled his final appeal, arguing the lethal injection procedure was cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of the appeal paved the way for the execution.

The execution by lethal injection appeared to be conducted without problems. But Harrison said Angel Nieves Diaz's Dec. 13 execution, which took two rounds of chemicals and appeared to cause Diaz to writhe in pain, has now caused him to question the whole process.

"I don't know whether Rolling suffered or not," he said.

Mann said he felt the execution was hardly comparable to the pain that Rolling inflicted.

"When you look at everything the families have been through and the community has been through, in a lot of respects the execution pales in comparison," he said.

Harrison said he was disappointed by Rolling's last statement, hoping his client would apologize to his victims. Instead, he sang a gospel hymn for two minutes.

"Thou art the alpha and omega. The beginning and the end. The sound of thy voice stills a mighty wind. None greater than thee oh Lord. None greater than thee," Rolling sang.

But Rolling did clear up one loose end before he died. Before the execution, he gave a note to his minister confessing to a 1989 triple slaying in Louisiana in which he was suspected but never convicted.

Julie Grissom, 24, her nephew Sean Grissom, 8, and her father Tom Grissom, 55, were found stabbed to death in their Shreveport home, almost a year before Rolling's deadly Gainesville crime spree.

Some of the family members of Rolling's victims had said repeatedly that the execution wouldn't provide closure, because the deaths of their loved ones would affect their lives forever.

But Hoyt said the execution did close the book on the killer's story.

"It did help ... a lot more than I thought it would," she said.

Rolling's execution

2006-10-29T13:42:00.000-08:00

Rolling's execution

It is a disturbing and sad irony that just after we witnessed the Amish's unquestioning compassion following schoolhouse murders, we saw newspaper images of people rejoicing and celebrating a day of revenge after Danny Rolling's execution.

Did we learn nothing from the Amish?

What lessons are we teaching our children?

Perhaps the difference lies in the one murderer taking his own life and the state having the power to put the other to death.

Regardless of how a murderer dies, an execution should surely be a time of reflection and sorrow.

Like the man who killed the Amish girls, Rolling had a mother.

Would the community ever have gone to her door step with comfort and solace?

This is not a time for the tribal celebration of victory.

Rolling, for all his sickness, was one of us.

It should be a somber act to bring about the end of another human being.

Execute him, Yes, and let justice prevail.

But reflect upon the gravity that such a decision brings.

PHILLIP M. CHURCH, Miami

Easy executions like Rolling's leave difficult questions for us to deal with

2006-10-29T05:59:00.001-08:00

October 29, 2006 Florida

Easy executions like Rolling's leave difficult questions for us to deal with

Michael Mayo, Columnist, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

As I walked through Florida State Prison last week to witness Danny Rolling's execution, a Death Row inmate called me a killer.

"Murderers! All of you are murderers!" came the shout from a window as a dozen media witnesses and six prison officials boarded two vans to take us to the death chamber.

Takes one to know one, I felt like shouting back.

But during the one-minute ride from a prison wing to the death chamber, as we drove past the white hearse that would take Rolling's body off the grounds, I couldn't help but wonder if he had a point.

Across the road, some who came to cheer Rolling's execution held up placards with biblical passages supporting their position. "Whoever sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall be shed Genesis 9:6," said one sign.

So then what about the sixth commandment? Thou shalt not kill.

We kill.

We like to think we kill in the name of justice, not vengeance, with rigid burdens of proof and procedures, but it's killing just the same.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a suspension of the death penalty in1976, there have been 1,053 executions in the United States, including three last week.

There have been 63 in Florida.

I've seen two executions, of Rolling and Aileen Wuornos, in October 2002.

Witnessing the second was easier than the first, and the first was easier than I imagined.

That bothers me.

It also bothers me that instead of withering away in isolated obscurity, Rolling got a stage at the end. He went down singing, writing his own hymn for the occasion.

You should have seen the way we media witnesses painstakingly reconstructed the lyrics after the execution, trying to get our transcriptions consistent, as if his words were actually important.

A few days later, I still can't get his damn voice out of my head, still can't shake the melodic chorus of, "None greater than Thee, O Lord, none greater than Thee."I

t bothers me that Rolling got to enjoy the sweet, succulent taste of a lobster tail six hours before his death.

I don't know if my solution would be to deny a condemned person a last meal of his choosing, or to force him to eat decades of prison gruel until his heart gave out on his own.

All that's left after these easy executions are the tough questions.

Neither of the killers I saw die had much in the way of redeeming value.

Wuornos admitted to killing seven men.

Rolling admitted to killing five college students in Gainesville and a family of three in Shreveport, La. After doing the things that they did, a person probably should lose all rights and privileges in the human race, including breathing.

But is it society's place to bring that about?

It's an age-old issue. Nothing takes it from the abstract to the concrete like watching the color drain from the face of someone strapped to a gurney, seeing a chest heave one final breath.

The morning after Rolling's execution, I drove to Micanopy, a small town near Gainesville, to talk with Letha Prater. She was in the death chamber to witness Wuornos' execution four years ago. Wuornos killed her younger brother, Troy Burress, 50, in August 1990, the same month Rolling went on his killing spree.

Prater, 68, said she had no regrets about witnessing Wuornos' execution. Even though she admits it "probably was revenge," she said she found her death therapeutic."A cloud lifted off, a cloud just drifted away," said Prater, 68, a former Fort Lauderdale resident who moved to rural Central Florida in 1989.

"I was happy. I felt lighter. It didn't bring [my brother] back, but at least she paid for what she did."She said her brother was her best friend.

Burress, a pool maintenance man, moved from Delray Beach to Ocala in 1990 so he could be close to his sister. "When someone gets taken from you in a violent way, it makes you angry,"Prater said. After the execution she said her heart "wasn't quite as hard. Isent the hatred along with her."

About death penalty opponents, she said, "They say [capital punishment] is not civilized, that it's coming down to [the killers'] level. Well, you could never come down to their level. They massacre people. She shot my brother in the back."

According to Amnesty International, 129 countries have abolished the deathpenalty in law or practice, including most European nations, Canada and Mexico.

In 2005, according to Amnesty International, the countries with the most known judicial executions were China (at least 1,700), Iran (94),Saudia Arabia (86) and the United States (60).

"You wonder if most Americans know the company we're keeping," said MarkElliott of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an abolitionistgroup.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., said only about 10 percent of the approximately 3,400death row inmates in the United States will ever be executed."Who gets picked and why is not always clear," said Dieter, whose nonprofit group does not take an overall position on capital punishment but is critical of inconsistencies. "There's an unspoken agreement to have the death penalty, but not use it too much.

"Experts say death-penalty cases usually cost two to three times more than having someone imprisoned for life. "If the public knew what this really cost, they'd turn away from it," Elliott said. That day doesn't seem near.

According to an ABC News poll in July, 65 percent of Americans support the death penalty. A Gallup Poll in May found that 60 percent of Americans think it's applied fairly.They must not follow the news.

Earlier this decade, Illinois put a moratorium on the death penalty and all but emptied Death Row after a spate of exonerations raised serious questions about its use.

According to AmnestyInternational, 123 Death Row inmates in the United States have been released since 1973 after evidence emerged about their innocence. Florida has had the highest number of exonerations, 22.

But there are some cases, like Rolling's, where the death penalty seems fitting.
I used to strongly oppose capital punishment. Now I'm more ambivalent.

Maybe it's because I'm now a father of a little girl who turns 1 next month.

As I spent time with the relatives and friends of Rolling's victims the past two weeks, as I heard them describe their agony and saw their faces at the execution, I thought maybe they deserve this small satisfaction, even if itis retribution at its basest.

Tommy Carroll, who needed years of therapy after finding the mutilated and stabbed bodies of his childhood friends Tracy Paules and Manny Taboada in their Gainesville apartment, said, "For someone who maintains their innocence, when there are doubts or no DNA, I could see not having it. But for someone like Rolling, who admits his guilt, my only question is why it has to take so long?"

Maybe executing him does make us all murderers.

Maybe that's not all bad.---

Source : South Florida Sun-Sentinel

With Rolling's execution, vindication seemed out of grasp

2006-10-29T01:39:00.000-07:00

Oct. 28
FLORIDA:

With Rolling's execution, vindication seemed out of grasp----A lawyer spent 16 years living under a shadow of suspicion.

Among the people standing vigil outside the prison at Danny Rollings execution Wednesday was Hal Carter, an Atlanta lawyer.

Carter hoped Rolling would confess to the murders nearly 17 years ago of Julie, Tom and Sean Grissom in Shreveport, La.

At the time of the killings, Carter was Julie Grissom's fiance.
He also became a suspect.

Now, he wanted the suspicion to end.

But at 6:30 p.m., when those outside learned that Rolling had sung a hymn and was then executed, Carter realized his name would continue to be connected to the Shreveport murders.

"I left despondent," he said.

"Neither I nor the Grissom family would ever have the certainty we needed."

When the Grissom murders took place in November 1989, dozens of TV broadcasts and newspapers said the police had named Carter as "the primary suspect."

Shunned, insulted and threatened, he closed down his prosperous Shreveport law practice and moved to Georgia, leaving family and friends.

"Not only was I destroyed over Julie's death, I was also falsely accused,"he said. "Worst of all, the real killer was free to strike again."

Rolling struck 9 months later in Gainesville. After the Gainesville murders, Grissom began his own investigation and discovered uncanny similarities between the 3 Shreveport murders and the 5 Gainesville murders.

Among the similarities: The murderer's rare bloodtype was the same at both crime scenes and the bodies were posed.

On Wednesday, as Carter stood in the field outside Florida State Prison in Starke with death penalty opponents, a sparrow fell from the sky at his feet. He held it through the execution, feeling its beating heart in his hands.

After the execution, he raised his hands in the air and the bird soared toward the sky."I took this as a sign that something good would happen," he said.

This thought was bolstered by a letter he had received from Rolling weeks before. Carter had written Rolling and asked for "the truth about the Grissom murders." Rolling had responded in writing, "You will be vindicated. My word."

But when people standing outside the prison learned that Rolling had said nothing, Carter realized his hopes had been dashed.

Rolling had gone to his death without keeping his word, or so Carter thought.

Until he got a phone call Thursday night.

It was Mike Hudspeth, the Shreveport pastor who had spent Wednesday with Rolling. He said he had asked Rolling to clear Carter's name and shortly before the execution Rolling had handed him a written statement."You'll be very pleased," Hudspeth told Carter.

Police would announce the confession in Shreveport on Friday morning, he said.

In a messy combination of cursive and print on a crumpled piece of paper, Rolling had written, "Hereby, I make a formal, written statement concerning the murder of Julie, Tom and Sean Grissom in my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana.

Hal Carter, Julie Grissom's former fiance is 100% innocent totally pure of that crime. "

Carter was shocked.

He thanked Hudspeth and told him that the news had not only "changed a very sad day, but also the rest of my life."

Rolling's confession continued: "I and I alone am guilty. It is my hand that took those precious lights out of this old dark world. With all of my heart I wish I could bring them back. Being a native son of Shreveport, I can only offer this confession of deep felt remorse over the loss of such fine outstanding souls."

Back at his suburban Atlanta home, Carter said he spent all of Friday thanking God for this sudden, unexpected turn of events.

"I also thanked Danny," he said. "
I know he was a terrible killer, but he kept his word."

(source: St. Petersburg Times)

Executed killer claimed 3 more victims

2006-10-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

SHREVEPORT, La. - Shortly before he was executed in Florida this week, serial killer Danny Rolling handed his spiritual adviser a handwritten confession to a grisly triple murder 17 years ago in his hometown of Shreveport, police said Friday.

Rolling, the son of a Shreveport police officer, was executed Wednesday for killing five college students in Gainesville, Fla., in a ghastly string of slayings in 1990.

In 1997, Rolling sent a detailed confession, including a description of the crime scene, to the woman he had married in prison. She gave it to police, said retired police detectives Don Ashley and Danny Fogger, who had worked on the case.

Still, police said was a relief to have a signed, public confession.

The document was released at a news conference Friday. Most of the text is in cursive, with large, gothic-style capitals at the start of each paragraph.

Rolling's death poses essential questions

2006-10-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

By Jake Ramsey Editorial Notebook

Sixteen years ago, Danny Rolling killed five UF and SFCC students. He raped some, mutilated others and posed his victims' bodies to heighten the ghoulish effect of his crime scenes. The murders were nightmarish, surreal - in fact, Rolling always seemed more like a B-movie clichUa lunatic drifter out of central casting, than a flesh-and-blood human being.

Today he faces the sharp end of a government needle. Without a last-minute reprieve, he'll be dead by 6:15 p.m.

No one will shed a tear for Rolling - not the Alligator, not the student body and especially not the victims' families. They waited 16 years for this moment, almost the span of their loved ones' short lives, hoping to find some closure. Maybe they will.

But I won't rejoice in Rolling's death. I can't. For all his crimes, all his monstrous indifference to human feeling, he's still a person - a member of our species, whether we like it or not. Tonight, in a small room in Bradford County, armed guards will strap him to a table and kill him.

It's easy to oppose capital punishment when the man with the needle in his arm is an abstraction - a mug shot on the nightly news, a name in the morning paper. But when you see him up close, specifically, when he stops being one of 376 inmates on death row and becomes the one they're executing tonight, you want to push the plunger yourself.

It should be the other way around. But somehow it's not.

And so it is with Rolling. Like all murderers, he has victims, innocent people with families who miss them and want justice. But he's not like the other men in Florida State Prison, not really.

They killed cops, cheating lovers, gas station clerks - sometimes brutally, sometimes in cold blood, but not for kicks, for whimsy. Their offenses are in a different league.

In so many ways, Rolling stands alone, a test case for the death penalty. His guilt is beyond doubt. His crimes are heinous - even now, a decade and a half later, they've lost none of their power to shock and sicken. Worst of all, he shows no signs of genuine remorse. For once, the truism holds up: If anyone deserves a lethal injection, it's Danny Rolling.

But after the doctors pronounce him dead, after the reporters go home and everyone moves on to the next outrage, will we have gained anything by Rolling's execution?

His victims will still be dead. Their families will still face the unfathomable task of living without them. And long after Rolling has faded into anonymity, we'll still know that men like him are made of the same stuff as us - the same blood, the same guts. It's an ugly fact that no syringe can ever change.

We want him to die - I want him to die - because his existence is an obscenity, an affront to our humanity. But killing him won't make us clean again. So tonight, when the state hauls Rolling out of his cage and finishes him off, ask yourself: What is this supposed to accomplish?

Jake Ramsey is the Opinions editor of the Alligator.

Media frenzy descends on Rolling's execution site

2006-10-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

By DREW HARWELL
Alligator Writer

Danny Rolling's high-profile execution Wednesday drew considerably more media than recent executions.

TV, radio and print journalists from across the state convened in Raiford, a small town of about 200 people, to gather details about the serial killer's lethal injection.

About 20 big white media vans, their satellites jutting toward the sky, sat parked in a large lot across the street from the execution chamber where Rolling lived his final minutes.

Parts of the parking lot were surrounded by barbed wire. Herds of cows grazed less than 200 yards away.

Kristen Guilfoos, a UF telecommunications junior covering the execution for WRUF-AM, called the press setup a "media affront."

"It's almost ridiculous," she said. "It's like a media circus. I mean, look at all the trucks."

Rory O'Neill, a reporter for the wire service Metro Networks, said no one was on the scene when he first arrived at noon. At the 3 p.m. press conference, he counted 17 cameras and about 50 reporters and camera operators.

Compared to other executions, he said, there was a much greater presence of media and protestors.

"I've never seen a crowd of supporters," said O'Neill. "If you talk to people, they're angry."

Bridget Murphy, a reporter for The Florida Times-Union, said she'd been at the scene since 3 p.m.

"Look at all of these trucks. I haven't seen it like this since Hurricane Charley," she said as she walked briskly to a press conference after Rolling's death. She called the group of TV trucks "satellite city."

Chris Tisch, a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, walked to the press conference after he witnessed the execution. He was one of the few reporters who had a seat to witness the execution, along with reporters from The Associated Press, The Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and several TV stations.

He said 47 witnesses, including 12 media professionals, watched Rolling's lethal injection.

At the press conference, the victims' family members spoke at a lectern topped with a large cluster of news microphones.

Tisch scribbled on a white legal pad and another reporter seated on the ground typed feverishly on her laptop.

Diana Hoyt and Theresa Ann Garren, both barely tall enough to look over the lectern, spoke solemnly to the music of snapping cameras and scribbling pens. When the stepmother and mother of victim Christa Hoyt stopped talking, a cacophony of questions sounded out.

However, some photographers unfortunate enough to be in the back aimed their questions at reporters blocking their view.

"Down," they yelled. "C'mon, get down in front, please?"

Rolling Confessed To Other Murders Before He Was Executed

2006-10-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

October 27, 2006 5:22 p.m. EST

Linda Young - All Headline News Staff Writer

Gainesville, FL (AHN) - Convicted serial murderer Danny Rolling cleared his conscience and a Louisiana cold case before he was executed by admitting to killing three people that authorities suspected he had committed.

Shortly before he was executed Rolling slipped his spiritual advisor a handwritten note confessing to a triple murder 17 years ago in Shreveport, La., his hometown.

But earlier in the week the former Shreveport lead investigator on the case told the Gainesville Sun he believed Rolling was responsible.

"I just have no doubt that he's the guy," said Don Ashley, 55, who now is an investigator for the Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office in Louisiana. "The only just punishment for him is him receiving the death penalty."

Rolling did receive the death penalty on Wednesday. In his one-page note he wrote: "I, and I alone am guilty" "It was my hand that took those precious lights out of this ole dark world....with all my heart and soul would I could bring them back."

Rolling, was the son of a Shreveport police officer. His execution on Wednesday was for killing five college students in Gainesville, Florida, in 1990.

Text of Danny Rolling's confession to Shreveport murders

2006-10-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

(AP) — The text of executed killer Danny Rolling's confession to a triple murder in Shreveport, La., in 1989, the year before he killed five college students in Gainesville, Fla.

Spelling, punctuation and capitalization are Rolling's. Most of the text is in cursive, with large, gothic-style capitals at the start of each paragraph and in the word "By" in the third paragraph. Rolling's first signature, the names and all capitalized matter in the second section, and the entire last section are in print rather than cursive writing.

I know that sorrow, that heartfelt bane, that dross th' mortal flame. Stone 'pon stone th' final throw ... etched hither tow — th' captive soul.

• Danny Rolling
In order to fulfill all things that no stone be unturned. Here by I make a formal written statement concerning the murders of Julie, Tom & SEAN GRISSOM in my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana ... HAL CARTER, Julie Grissom's former fiancee is 100% INNOCENT — TOTALLY PURE of that crime. I, and I alone am guilty. It was my hand that took those precious lights out of this ole dark world. With all my heart & soul would I could bring them back. Being a native son of Shreveport, I can only offer this confession of deep felt remorse over the loss of such fine — outstanding souls.

Have wept an ocean of tears ... By which mournful doth float 'pon a sea of regret.
_Danny Rolling

Among the Lowest of the Dead

2006-10-27T15:04:00.000-07:00

There was a lot of discussion in the boodle this morning (see comments on previous item) about the death penalty. Yesterday Danny Rolling, the serial killer, was executed for the 1990 student slayings in Gainesville. In the end, he left it to his attorney to pass along an apology to the families. He chose to sing a hymn instead.

Back in 1991 I went to Gainesville to report on the aftermath of the murders. At that point the murders were officially unsolved, but Rolling had been named as a suspect. Many Gainesville residents told me they didn't think Rolling could have done it -- he wasn't smart enough. They were expecting a criminal mastermind. They were expecting Dracula.

There's a tendency to imagine these killers as being rather smarter and more gothic, shall we say, than they really are. A lot of this is media-driven, a Hollywood fantasy. We think of a serial killer, we think of Hannibal Lecter. Even Ted Bundy was romanticized (played on TV by Mark Harmon back when he was People's Sexiest Man Alive). Rolling was a two-bit loser, a bit of a bumbler. Homicide doesn't actually require any special genius. There's also a tendency in the media to underplay, or ignore completely -- for whatever reason -- the sexual sadism that almost invariably motivates these killers.

(Note: The headline on this item comes from a book about Death Row in Florida, written by my friend and colleague David von Drehle.)
--
Actual exchange of messages:

Achenbach: No one will remember me when I'm dead.

Weingarten: Now, now. That's not true. There will be a period of time between your death and funeral when people will remember you. People who have to speak at the funeral, for example.
By Joel Achenbach October 26, 2006; 12:51 PM ET

Column: Each execution makes us face hard questions

2006-10-27T09:43:00.000-07:00

George Diaz
COMMENTARY
October 27, 2006

Danny Rolling is dead, but I suspect it's impossible to bury the pain for the families of his five victims.

A handful of them were witness to his execution Wednesday. Perhaps they found a measure of comfort in the sting of a lethal injection coursing through Rolling's veins. Others would argue that a greater punishment would be to allow him to rot away in a small cell, never, ever drawing a breath of air as a free man.

We have yet to define what constitutes moral justice for barbarians such as Rolling.

The death-penalty option offers a disturbing peek into our souls, serving as a litmus test on the concept of forgiveness.The dark side tugs at me whenever I read about the despicable crimes of Rolling and society's other misfits. Rolling stabbed, mutilated, decapitated and posed his victims.

If one of the victims had been close to me, my first reaction would be to beg for 10 minutes alone with Rolling in a room, where I let rage and hatred rush through every vein in my body.

But my conscience always creeps in, warning me that if I succumb to all those emotions, I am no different from the beasts who kill for the sake of sport and visceral satisfaction.

Societal protocol mandates that we allow the government to do our bidding when it comes to justice. In Florida, the ultimate payback is the death penalty. We are one of 38 states that allow executions.

You could argue that a lethal injection is more humane than beating someone to a lifeless pulp, but ultimately, the results are the same. It takes us back to the moral dilemma:

Will finding forgiveness in our hearts bring greater peace than seeing a man die for his sins?

Trying to reconcile the conflict between sin and spirituality is a personal choice. Finding answers becomes harder whenever an execution escalates into the tawdry madness that revolved around Rolling.

Interest in Rolling memorabilia spiked during the past week on the Internet, where various auction sites sell items created by the criminally infamous. On execution day, there was the usual bickering among those who detest the death penalty and those who embrace it wholeheartedly.

My guess is that each group is a minority, with many of us trapped in an emotional middle ground.

"I don't have the answers," said Chuck Seubert, a friend who was a New York City policeman for 16 years. "In some cases, the death penalty can't be given quick enough. In other cases, it's given too quickly.

"Jumping through all the legal hoops delayed justice for 16 years in Rolling's case. He murdered those people in Gainesville in 1990. That is frustratingly absurd.

The cost of executing a prisoner, factoring in appeals and other expenses, is far greater than keeping him or her in a cell for a lifetime. And studies have proved conclusively that the death penalty is not a deterrent.

It leads us to the spectacle of Rolling's final hours. He ate a meal of lobster, shrimp, a baked potato, cheesecake and sweet tea before he was eventually strapped to a gurney with a white sheet covering everything but his face, neck and right arm.

Some may call this closure. Others will tell you it only opens a window into our soul. The view can be conflicting, if not disturbing.

George Diaz can be reached at 407-420-5533 or gdiaz@orlandosentinel.com.

Crowd was a study of contrasts

2006-10-26T17:18:00.000-07:00

By NATHAN CRABBE
Sun staff writer

STARKE - The contrast between the two groups assembled in the field across from Florida State Prison couldn't have been greater.

On one side of a rope line, about 60 people cheered the execution of Gainesville serial killer Danny Rolling. A few people lit cigars at news of his death and waved signs, such as one reading "Finally . . . kill the killer."

On the other side, a slightly larger group prayed and sang hymns in opposition to the death penalty. Near a sign reading "We remember the victims . . . but not with more killing," some wept at word of the execution.

Perhaps none of those assembled embodied the split more than Jim and Matthew Niblack.

Jim, 54, of Gainesville said his 18-year-old son, Matthew, wanted to see the scene outside the execution, so they drove up together. Once they arrived, Jim joined the section of opponents and his son headed the other way.

"There should be no such thing as the death penalty if you don't do it for him," said Matthew, a Williston High School student.

His father said he believed executions drag the state down to the level of a murderer.

"You really doing the same that they've done," he said.The scene outside the prison recalled the 1989 execution of Ted Bundy, which drew a cheering crowd of more than 100 people and throngs of state and national reporters. In more recent executions, dozens of death penalty opponents have gathered but there have generally been just a few, if any, supporters.

Roy Brown, 55, of Tampa is the one regular among supporters. Brown's 7-year-old daughter was murdered, and the man convicted for the crime is on Death Row and now appealing his sentence.

"This is good for me - to see all these people come out here," he said. "If people don't come from Gainesville, they're some sorry dogs."Gainesville resident Bonnie Flassig has attended execution protests for years. She said the attention around Rolling's execution overshadowed the problems with some of the other 61 executions since the death penalty was reinstated in Florida.

"We like to think of Danny Rolling and Ted Bundy as the poster boys of why we need the death penalty," she said. "There are 61 others that I certainly wouldn't call the worst of the worst.

"While family members of Rolling's victims assembled inside the prison, some friends of those victims joined the crowds outside. Tonya Wilson, 34, of Newberry said she was supposed to be the roommate of victims Sonja Larson and Christina Powell during the semester they were killed.

"I'm so glad that this day is here," she said. "Finally we're going to get some kind of justice."Atlanta attorney Hal Carter, 56, said he once dated Julie Grissom, one of Rolling's victims in the Louisiana killings for which he was never prosecuted. Carter said he came to show that someone who was close to a victim could still oppose the death penalty.

"Whether it's by Danny Rolling or the state, it's murder," he said.

Before the execution, some family members were critical about the protesters and news media attention given to Rolling. Chealea Neckler, the 17-year-old niece of victim Christa Hoyt, said seeing protesters was the hardest part of the day.

"I feel like they don't know the story," she said. "They didn't live it."

Mario Taboada, the 45-year-old brother of victim Manuel Taboada, said he hoped the news media would focus on the victims rather than Rolling.

"I don't think he deserves this much attention," he said.He was also critical of an independent horror movie about the murders, "The Gainesville Ripper," which is now being filmed. Director Josh Townsend was in the crowd outside the prison, getting footage he said he will use at the end of the movie.

The former Gainesville resident said he changed the names of the victims and other details out of respect for the victims' families.

"That's the best we could do to be respectful and still tell the story," he said.

Other Gainesville residents who assembled outside the prison said they came to see the conclusion of a story that they experienced firsthand.

Retired University of Florida sports management professor Owen Holyoak, 73, sat in a lawn chair and listened to a radio headset for news about the execution. He said he remembered that students stopped attending his and other classes in fall 1990 because of the fear surrounding the murders. "It just had a profound effect on me when it happened," he said.

Sitting among the execution supporters, he said, "just seemed like the thing to do to try to get some closure."

Matthew Niblack said he was just a small child at the time of the killing, but wanted to attend the protests just the same. But he said his first visit to the field across from Florida State Prison will also be his last."I'm not coming to another one again," he said.

Nathan Crabbe can be reached at 338-3176 or crabben@gvillesun.com.

UF alumni share thoughts about Rolling execution

2006-10-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

Angela Sachitano
Last updated on: 10/25/2006 6:23:14 PM

GAINESVILLE: After spending the last 12 years on death row, convicted killer Danny Rolling was executed Wednesday. He pleaded guilty to murdering five students at the University of Florida 16 years ago. Two Fort Myers residents who attended the University of Florida at the time of the murders were willing to share their stories.

The crime spree left residents of Gainesville, and those around much of the state, in fear for several weeks. Florida Governor Jeb Bush says he regrets it has taken so long for Rolling to be put to death.

"He is the poster child, if you will, of why there should be a death penalty; atrocious crimes committed. It's more than appropriate for him to receive the sentence he received," said Bush.

Many people say that it is hard to comprehend what it would have been like for the thousands of students living in Gainesville at the time of the murders. One Fort Myers couple says that they were around when it all happened and they were willing to share their story.

Though it has been 16 years since the murders took place, former University of Florida students Lee and Stefanie Cutshall say that the memories still haunt them.

"It happened day after day. You were in shock, in a stop mode," said Lee.

The murders happened during the first week of fall classes. At a time when football and fraternity parties were on the minds of most American college students, Lee and Stefanie, and thousands of others in Gainesville, were locking their doors, staying inside, and some left Gainesville all together.

"They said they were all petite brunettes and mom said, 'You are a brunette.' That's when they made the phone call to come home for a while," said Stefanie.

Stefanie left Gainesville, but Lee stayed only to learn about a fourth victim. He says it was someone he knew - the next door neighbor of his best friend.

"He called me and told me they had found his neighbor, it was that girl. That's when you realize how close it is, how personal it is," said Lee.

On Wenesday, the day of Rolling's execution, even though it is 16 years later, the Cutshalls say they sill have no pity for Rolling.

"What he did was cruel and unusual. It was vicious. What they are doing to him, lethal injection, that's too humane," said Stefanie.

Though that chapter of their life will soon have some closure, the Cutshalls say that the bond shared between all University of Florida students will never die.

"People still honor them. It's one of those things that is important to the history of Gainesville," said Stefanie.

Rolling was the third inmate to be put to death in five weeks.

Serial Killer Danny Rolling Is Dead

2006-10-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

Rolling Executed By Lethal Injection

POSTED: 5:38 pm EDT October 25, 2006

STARKE, Fla. -- Danny Rolling was executed Wednesday evening at 6 p.m. for the 1990 murders and mutilations of five college students in Gainesville.

Rolling was strapped on a gurney, placed on a heart monitor and wheeled into the execution chamber late Wednesday afternoon, where the eight carefully marked syringes used in a lethal injection awaited.

The first two syringes contained sodium pentothal, which rendered Rolling unconscious. The third contained a saline solution that was used as a flushing agent. Another two syringes containing pancuronium bromide were then administered to paralyze him. Another syringe of saline solution was administered, and the final two doses of potassium chloride delivered the lethal doses that stopped his heart from beating.

Rolling was declared dead at 6:13 p.m.

Sadie Darnell, who was a spokeswoman for the Gainesville Police Department at the time of the murders, said she believes the process is so humane that it might disturb the families of the victims.

"One of my concerns is that for the family members who do witness that they may be struck and affected by how easy it is, that it's a gentle, mild form of death," she said.

Before the execution, Dianna Hoyt, whose stepdaughter, Christa Hoyt, was one of the victims, said she would rather have seen Rolling get executed by the electric chair like infamous serial killer Ted Bundy did when he was executed in Florida. Lethal injection became the alternative form of execution in 2000.

"I don't understand," said Hoyt, who attended the execution. "When he (Rolling) was convicted, it was the electric chair, and I really felt like it needed to go back to that."

Rolling's last-minute appeal contending that the chemicals used in Florida's execution process could cause severe pain was turned down Wednesday by the U.S. Supreme Court just a half hour before the execution. The court had previously turned down the same arguments in two other Florida executions this fall.

Rolling Prepares to Die

2006-10-25T15:52:00.000-07:00

Gainesville student killer eats last meal and is moved to cell next to death chamber

Jim Leusner
Orlando Sentinel
October 25, 2006, 5:00 PM EDT
STARKE -- Barring any unexpected last-minute, high-court intervention, Danny Harold Rolling, the admitted Gainesville student killer, will be strapped to a gurney at 6 p.m. today and injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs.

His death would comes 16 years after the five murders set off a week of panic and fear in the college town.His final attempt to stop his death was before the U.S. Supreme Court today.

The appeal claims that the chemicals used in the execution procedure cause severe pain, but the high court has declined to intervene in two other Florida executions where the condemned used similar
arguments.

Corrections Department spokesman Robby Cunningham said Rolling, 52, was calm and cooperative ahead of the execution.

Before being moved to a cell next to the death chamber at Florida State Prison, Rolling visited with his brother Kevin, and his brother's pastor Jim Wallingworth, Cunningham said.Rolling ate his last meal of lobster tail, butterfly shrimp, baked potato, strawberry cheesecake and sweet tea shortly before noon. "He enjoyed his last meal. He ate every bite," Cunningham said.

The victims' families ran an advertisement Thursday in The Gainesville Sun, thanking the community for its support: "We hope you will remember August 1990 and the years that followed without any sense of community shame for what has happened here. You turned a blemish into a rose."

Crowds were expected outside the prison, with possibly the largest turnout since Ted Bundy's execution.

He was suspected in the deaths and disappearances of 36 women across the country. He was electrocuted Jan. 24, 1989, in the same death chamber where Rolling will die by lethal injection.

In Gainesville, the wounds of the town and the victims' families will live on."I don't think it – Gainesville -- will ever be exactly the same," former Alachua State Attorney Rod Smith, who put Rolling on death row in 1994, said recently.

"There will be a special memory of the terror inflicted."The lives of five young college students were violently cut short by Rolling's rage.

Sonja Larson of Deerfield Beach. Christina Powell of Jacksonville. Christa Hoyt of Archer. Tracy Paules of Miami. Manuel Taboada of Carol City.

After the largest and costliest manhunt in Florida history, Rolling -- a man previously considered a common criminal -- would be exposed as one of the nation's most notorious serial killers.Rolling would be the 63rd inmate to be put to death since Florida resumed executions in 1979 and the third this year.

He would be the 259th since 1924, when the state took over the duty from individual counties.--

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report

Rolling faces execution for murders of 5 college students

2006-10-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

STARKE, Fla. -- Danny Harold Rolling, the state's most notorious serial killer since Ted Bundy, ate his last meal and met with his brother and spiritual adviser as he prepared to be executed Wednesday for the grisly hunting-knife slayings of five college students in 1990.

Rolling, 52, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Wednesday for the murders that threw the University of Florida into a panic as fall semester began in August 1990. Several victims' relatives plan to be in the execution chamber at Florida State Prison to watch.

Rolling was calm and cooperative ahead of the execution, Corrections Department spokesman Robby Cunningham said. He spent several hours Wednesday with his brother Kevin, and his brother's pastor Jim Wallingworth, officials said.

He was later moved to a cell a few feet from the death chamber, Cunningham told about 100 journalists outside the prison. Warden Randall Bryant was scheduled to read the death warrant listing Rolling's crimes and the reasons for his execution. Then Rolling would get a shower and a new suit and white dress shirt.

His final appeal was before the U.S. Supreme Court, where he was challenging the constitutionality of the chemicals used in Florida's execution procedure. But the high court has declined to intervene in two other Florida executions in which death row inmates used similar arguments.

The horror of Rolling's killings began when police officers found the bodies of the victims over a three-day period, one decapitated and posed, others mutilated and several sexually assaulted.

The spree touched off a massive manhunt, causing students to cower in fear and purchase weapons. Rolling was jailed for a supermarket robbery when investigators used DNA to link him to the killings months later.

Rolling pleaded guilty to the slayings in 1994, shocking the courtroom on the first day of his trial. "There are some things you just can't run from, this being one of those," Rolling told Circuit Judge Stan R. Morris, who accepted the pleas and found him guilty and later sentenced him to death.

He later told The Associated Press: "I do deserve to die, but do I want to die? No. I want to live. Life is difficult to give up."

The looming execution has reopened old wounds for some of the victims' families, including Dianna Hoyt, the stepmother of victim Christa Hoyt. She plans to be in the execution chamber.

"It is very hard for us to see someone else die," she said. "But, he deserves it."

Ricky Paules, the mother of Tracy Paules, will be joined by another daughter to watch: "If you see us crying, it is not for Rolling, but for Tracy."

The victims' families ran an advertisement Thursday in The Gainesville Sun, thanking the community for its support: "We hope you will remember August 1990 and the years that followed without any sense of community shame for what has happened here. You turned a blemish into a rose."
Rolling ate his last meal of lobster tail, butterfly shrimp, baked potato, strawberry cheesecake and sweet tea shortly before noon.

"He enjoyed his last meal. He ate every bite," Cunningham said.

Crowds of death penalty opponents and supporters were expected outside the prison, with possibly the largest turnout since Bundy's execution. He was suspected in the deaths and disappearances of 36 women across the country. He was electrocuted Jan. 24, 1989, in the same death chamber where Rolling will die.

That case was still fresh in the minds of many when Rolling's killings began the next year in roughly the same area as some of Bundy's.

The bodies of Sonja Larson, 18, and Christina Powell, 17, were found stabbed to death on a Sunday afternoon in 1990, in a town house just off the University of Florida campus. Hoyt, 18, whose decapitated head was left on a bookshelf, was found the next morning in her isolated duplex; and Paules and Manny Taboada, both 23, were discovered dead a day later at Gatorwood Apartments.

For months, a large task force of local, state and federal agents followed hundreds of leads and took blood samples from dozens of men. They did not know that Rolling was already behind bars in Marion County after robbing a grocery store.

Then authorities in Rolling's hometown of Shreveport, La., investigating a triple slaying that they believe he committed, suggested that police should check out the drifter and ex-con. The DNA left at the crime scenes in Gainesville matched genetic material police recovered from Rolling during some dental work.

Throughout the years, Rolling has insisted he was not as atrocious as many thought.

In a letter to the AP in 2002, Rolling wrote, "I assure you I am not a salivating ogre. Granted ... time's past; the dark era of long ago _ Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde did strike up and down the corridors of insanety."

Rolling, who often drew dark and sexual pictures, claimed he had good and bad multiple personalities. He blamed the murders on abuse he suffered as a child from his police officer father and his treatment in prison. He said he killed one person for every year he was behind bars.

He served a total of eight years in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi before the killings.

In his trips through north central Florida courts, Rolling twice sang gospel songs when he was sentenced. A tape of his own songs was found by investigators at a campsite in Gainesville where he stayed while committing the killings.

Rolling would be the 63rd inmate to be put to death since Florida resumed executions in 1979 and the third this year. He would be the 259th since 1924, when the state took over the duty from individual counties.

Protesters, media gather near prison for Rolling's execution

2006-10-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

BRENT KALLESTAD
Associated Press

STARKE, Fla. - As serial killer Danny Rolling awaited execution Wednesday, the scene outside the Florida State Prison was eerily familiar to the evening more than 17 years ago when serial killer Ted Bundy died in Florida's electric chair.

More than 100 protesters gathered near dozens of death penalty supporters, curious onlookers and journalists on the barren cow pasture across from the prison where Rolling, 52, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. Rolling was convicted of the 1990 hunting-knife slayings of five college students.

"They're doing a good thing," said Randy Hicks, a 35-year-old Lake Butler truck driver and former prison guard who occasionally watched over Rolling. "This guy deserves it. It's very overdue."

Death penalty opponents, who were cordoned off in a separate area by police tape, said the execution only served to provide Rolling additional attention. One group briefly held hands in a circle and sang quietly.

"The state of Florida is giving this psychopathic killer just what he wanted," said Mark Elliott of Clearwater, spokesman for Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "He will now enjoy celebrity status courtesy of a high profile state execution. Lock him up, throw away the key and let him die alone and unremembered."

Rolling terrorized the north central Florida town of Gainesville when he mutilated and murdered the college students - just 19 months after Bundy's execution in January of 1989.

Bundy, suspected in the deaths and disappearances of 36 women, was electrocuted in the same death chamber where Rolling will die.

Police ended a massive manhunt in the case after they discovered that DNA from Rolling, already jailed for a supermarket robbery, linked him to the killings.

Rolling pleaded guilty to the slayings in 1994, shocking the courtroom on the first day of his trial.

In a 2000 letter to The Associated Press, Rolling recalled the years he served in prison in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi before coming to Florida.

"A mangy dog gets more consideration than what I received," he wrote.

But Rolling added: "Any complaint I may have pales in comparison to the terrible wrong I inflicted upon good people. I stand in the shadow of their suffering. If it is to be mercy, then I shall be eternally grateful. If it to be the wrath of vengeance, then God grant me the strength to face what I must."
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/15847159.htm

Prayer of Passage for Danny Rollings

2006-10-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

Oh Goddess
There is great sadness
A cherished one has gone
Emptyness engulfs us
Loss languishes within
Help us bear this grief
Accompany their spirit
Comfort we who grieve
Let us rejoice in their life
May their essence be recorded
In the Great Book of Shadows
Renew our rememberance with joy

Blessed Be.
Carie Mendyk

Rolling will die, then what?

2006-10-25T04:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/24/State/Rolling_will_die__the.shtml

Rolling will die, then what?

He’ll be the third inmate to die in 35 days, but that pace likely won’t continue.

By CHRIS TISCH, Times Staff Writer
Published October 24, 2006

STARKE — Florida’s death chamber likely will claim its most infamous killer since Ted Bundy this evening with the execution of Danny Rolling, who murdered five Gainesville students 16 years ago.

Rolling’s death will cap a tumultuous two years for Florida’s death penalty, which has endured criticism from lawyers, politicians and the Florida Supreme Court. It was stalled for much of this year while a condemned inmate took an appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
After an 18-month hiatus, the state resumed executions this fall and Rolling will be the third inmate to die in five weeks. Not since four inmates were executed within nine days in 1998 has the state’s death penalty moved with such speed.

But will that pace continue? Will the state begin to effectively empty a death row that has swelled to 376 people while averaging less than three executions per year over the last decade?

The short answer: probably not.

“We always get these little flurries,” said Carolyn Snurkowski, a longtime death penalty lawyer for the state Attorney General’s Office.

“And (people say) it’s always the end of the death penalty or the beginning of a ton of (executions) going through. And I’ve never seen either of those things happen.”

Danny Rolling has spent 12 years on death row, about average for the 61 people executed in Florida.

Rolling raped, mutilated and posed some of the five victims he killed in Gainesville in 1990.
He later was arrested for robbing an Ocala supermarket. Police learned he was a suspect in a similar murder in Louisiana, then matched his DNA to the Gainesville crime scenes.
Rolling pleaded guilty to the murders, after which a jury unanimously voted for execution. Rolling did not have much grounds to appeal.

Still, even the thinnest of death row appeals take years. The cases are automatically reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court, and the condemned are afforded appeals to the federal courts as well.

While death penalty supporters have tried to limit these appeals, opponents point to one statistic to reinforce their importance: Twenty-two Florida death row inmates have been exonerated during the appeals process. That’s more than any other state.

Rolling’s appellate lawyer, Baya Harrison III, tried to follow the path of two other inmates who won stays this year because of issues surrounding lethal injection. But once those issues were resolved, both those inmates, Clarence Hill and Arthur Rutherford, were executed.
Harrison acknowledged Rolling has little fight left and likely will die tonight. He said Rolling not only has accepted that, but believes he deserves it.

Said Harrison: “He told me, 'I have kind of a relationship with my maker. But I don’t think even a merciful God is going to cut me some slack.’”

Rolling’s will be the most celebrated execution in years, but even the most high-profile executions can’t cure the death penalty’s ills.

The problem, many legal experts say, is that Florida’s death penalty law simply scoops up too many people, clogging the system.

For every Rolling, there are dozens of other killers who committed crimes that, though atrocious, don’t require the ultimate punishment, said Michael Mello, a University of Vermont law professor who worked as an appellate lawyer for Ted Bundy.

“We have this system in the first place because we want to kill the Bundys and kill the Danny Rollings,” he said.

“But lo and behold, we end up killing others.”

Unlike each of the other 37 states with the death penalty, Florida juries aren’t required to unanimously agree. Only a majority is required to vote for death.

In an opinion last year, the Florida Supreme Court urged lawmakers to change death penalty law so that only unanimous juries can sentence someone to death. Lawmakers didn’t listen.
This year, the American Bar Association issued a report that criticized Florida’s death penalty on many fronts, including the unanimous jury issue.

“The (Rolling) execution should not dissipate concerns over the major flaws in the system,” said Christopher Slobogin, a University of Florida law professor who led the team that issued the ABA report. “This is just a blip on the screen. It’s going to continue as business as usual with very few executions, partly because … there are legitimate concerns about who deserves to be put to death.”

Gov. Jeb Bush hasn’t signed any death warrants beyond Rolling’s, though he said Tuesday that he is reviewing a couple of other cases to see whether all the appeals have been exhausted, making them ready for execution.

If Rolling is executed tonight, his will be the 20th execution under Bush’s watch. That’s almost a third of the 62 executions since the state reinstalled the death penalty in 1979.

But a number of inmates gave up their appeals during the Bush administration and were executed voluntarily. In fact, six of the last 11 people executed in the state were volunteers.
For those who did not go voluntarily, the process often proves long and arduous. Bush blames the courts.

“I think the judiciary … in general have been slow to handle their part of this,” he said.

But defense lawyers say the system’s flaws — and lawmakers’ unwillingness to fix them — give them ammunition to muster their appeals.

“The problem isn’t lawyers throwing monkey wrenches, the problem is the death penalty itself,” said Martin McClain, who has represented more than 100 death row inmates. “The death penalty is a government program. And like any government program, reliability is an issue.”

Robert Batey, a professor at the Stetson University College of Law, said a number of issues — be it lethal injection protocol or the unanimous jury issue — will continue to slow the process down.
“I would never predict that anything with regard to the death penalty is going to be smooth,” Batey said.

“Undoubtedly, there will be other issues that come up.”

Times research staff contributed to this report.
Chris Tisch can be reached at tisch@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2359.

Rolling 'calm' before execution for Gainesville serial killings

2006-10-24T14:29:00.000-07:00

By RON WORD
Associated Press Writer

Danny Harold Rolling, the state's most notorious serial killer since Ted Bundy, was "remarkably calm" as he awaited his execution for the grisly 1990 slayings of five college students in Gainesville, his attorney said Tuesday.

Rolling's lawyers filed papers with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a stay of execution. The Florida attorney general asked the court to reject Rolling's application.

Rolling, 52, of Shreveport, La., is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Wednesday for a reign of terror that paralyzed Gainesville as the University of Florida's fall semester was beginning.

"He was remarkably calm. He is a lot calmer than his lawyers are," said Baya Harrison, his appeals lawyer. He said Rolling told him: "I don't want to die, but it looks like I'm going to die."

His execution is reopening old wounds for some of the victims' families. Several relatives plan to watch the execution at Florida State Prison in Starke, including Diana Hoyt, the stepmother of Christa Hoyt, 18.

"This is a tough thing, but is a necessary thing to go through," she said. "This is the final thing we can do for Christa and for my late husband and her dad, Gary."

"It is very hard for us to see someone else die," she said. "But, he deserves it.

"Ricky Paules, the mother of 23-year-old victim Tracy Paules, will be joined by another daughter: "If you see us crying, it is not for Rolling, but for Tracy."

The students' bodies, some mutilated, posed and sexually assaulted, were found over a three-day period in August and September 1990. The killing spree touched off a massive manhunt, causing students to cower in fear and purchase weapons as the killer remained unidentified.

Rolling was jailed for a supermarket robbery when investigators used DNA to link him to the killings months later.

When he was finally scheduled to go on trial in 1994, he shocked the courtroom by pleading guilty to the five slayings."There are some things you just can't run from, this being one of those," Rolling told Circuit Judge Stan R. Morris, who accepted the pleas and found him guilty.

Rolling's remaining appeal contends that the chemicals used in Florida's execution process can cause severe pain. It is before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has turned down the same arguments in two other Florida executions this fall.

Harrison does not believe he will be able to halt the execution.

"It's tough, we are down to the last effort," Harrison said. "I'm not hopeful, to tell you the truth."

Crowds are expected outside the prison Wednesday, with possibly the largest turnout since Bundy's execution. He was suspected in the deaths and disappearances of 36 women across the country. He was electrocuted Jan. 24, 1989, in the same death chamber where Rolling will die by lethal injection.

That case was still fresh in the minds of many when Rolling's killings began the next year in roughly the same area as some of Bundy's.

Sonja Larson, 18, and Christina Powell, 17, were stabbed to death on a Sunday afternoon in 1990, in a townhouse just off the University of Florida campus. Christa Hoyt, who had been decapitated, was found the next morning in her isolated duplex; and Tracy Paules and Manny Taboada, 23, were discovered dead a day later at Gatorwood Apartments.

Authorities in Rolling's hometown of Shreveport, La., investigating a triple slaying that they believe he committed later suggested to a task force that it should check out the drifter and ex-con. The DNA left at the crime scenes in Gainesville matched genetic material police recovered from Rolling during some dental work.

Throughout the years, Rolling has insisted he was not as atrocious as many thought.

In a letter to The Associated Press in 2002, Rolling wrote, "I assure you I am not a salivating ogre. Granted ... time's past; the dark era of long ago - Dr. Jeckle & Mr. Hyde did strike up & down the corridors of insanety."

Rolling claimed he had good and bad multiple personalities. He blamed the murders on abuse he suffered as a child from his police officer father and his treatment in prison. He said he killed one person for every year he was behind bars. He served a total of eight years in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi before the killings.

Victim's Brother Talks About Execution Of Mass Murderer

2006-10-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

POSTED: 4:16 pm EDT October 24, 2006

UPDATED: 4:50 pm EDT October 24, 2006

ORLANDO, Fla. -- An Orlando man's sister was one of five people killed in the Gainesville murders. Channel 9 talked to her brother Tuesday, the day before Danny Rolling is set to be executed.

The man who murdered five University of Florida students will be executed Wednesday. Jim Larson, the brother of one of Danny Rolling's victims, said his death is long overdue.

The families of all five students are meeting in Gainesville on Wednesday for lunch together. Then they'll make the trip to Florida state prison at Starke.

Together, the Larsons are getting through it. Their family has been shattered in the most heart-wrenching, nightmarish way. They live with mental pictures that most of us cannot comprehend. They black them out by looking at photographs of wonderful memories.

Jim Larson is not looking forward to what he'll see Wednesday, but he'll be there for his sister and for his mother.

"I don't think it's gonna do anything for me, to be honest with you. It might put one more ugly picture in my head. I don't think it's gonna help," he said.

Sonja Larson was only 18 when she was brutally murdered. Because of her love of children, she was planning to become a teacher through her studies at the University of Florida. Before her first class, she and her roommate were found dead in their apartment, not just murdered, but bound, gagged, raped and mutilated.

"Maybe when I get on the other side of this, something will change in me. But I don't imagine so. I think that the images are there and it's just something I have to deal with now," Larson said. "I miss my sister."

Larson went on with his wedding four months after his sister's murder.

"She was supposed to be in the wedding. There was a spot for her there we left open," he said. "I remember the honeymoon being good. I don't think I thought about it too much, but it was there, I'm sure."

Several years later, his wife Carla was kidnapped and murdered. He said he doesn't cry much these days. His daughter Jessica keeps him going, day to day, helping him take care of things when he can't manage.

"I'll be happy when this is all over, when all the families can pick up the pieces and move on," he said.

But Larson will probably be faced with it all over again some day if his wife's killer, death row inmate John Huggins, is ever put to death. Larson said, depending on how it goes Wednesday, he might just stay home next time.

Rolling, the state's most notorious serial killer since Ted Bundy, awaits his execution for the 1990 slayings of five college students in Gainesville. The students' bodies, some mutilated, posed and sexually assaulted, were found over a three-day period in August and September 1990.

Rolling was jailed for a supermarket robbery when investigators used DNA to link him to the killings months later. When he was finally scheduled to go on trial in 1994, he pleaded guilty to the five slayings.

Rolling a Day Away From Death

2006-10-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

Convicted killer Danny Rolling is reported to be calm less than 24 hours from his execution for the 1990 murders of five college students.

Rolling is scheduled to die tomorrow night at 6, at the Florida State Prison in Starke.

"I don’t want to die, but it looks like I’m going to die," Rolling said to his attorney.

Rolling has a last appeal pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. He contends the chemicals used in Florida’s execution process cause severe pain.

He apparently spared his victims no pain. Some of the students he is accused of killing were mutilated, posed and sexually assaulted. He was linked to the serial killings after a supermarket robbery. Detectives used D-N-A to charge him in the murders months later.

In the next 24 hours, the prison will serve Rolling the final meal he requests.

Procedure calls for a visit from the warden and chaplain, who remain on site until after the execution. Five witnesses will attend the execution, among them Sarasota anchorwoman Linda Carson, the mother of CBS47 and FOX30 reporter Cathi Carson. Rolling has written letters to Mrs. Carson and she has covered his appeals cases for many years.

In Gainesville, U.F. students remember Rolling’s victims. A memorial to all five of those he killed still stands.

Families brace for Rolling's death

2006-10-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

By LISE FISHER

Sun staff writer

Last month, the families of five slain college students got the news - convicted killer Danny Rolling's death warrant had been signed.

Some had sat through Rolling's sentencing 12 years ago, listening to the gruesome details of their loved ones' final moments. Year after year they politely and repeatedly answered questions from friends, the curious and the media, about the case, their relatives and Rolling's appeals even while trying to avoid speaking of him or saying his name. And, throughout it all, they wondered when and, sometimes, if the legal process that seemed to drag on and on would ever end.

Yet, while they say it is time, Rolling's pending execution at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Florida State Prison has brought even more emotion and another painful obstacle for the families to overcome.

"I'm at the beginning almost again where I could just start crying at the drop of a hat," said Dianna Hoyt, 62, Christa Hoyt's stepmother.

Officers found the body of the 18-year-old Newberry High School graduate at her Gainesville apartment on Aug. 27, 1990. Rolling had broken into her home and lain in wait for her to return.

In 1994, Rolling pleaded guilty to killing Christa Hoyt and four other Gainesville college students - Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach, Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville, Manuel "Manny" Taboada, 23, of Carol City, and Tracy Paules, 23, of Miami - in August 1990.

Louisiana authorities also say Rolling was their only suspect in the 1989 stabbing deaths of three Shreveport residents, Julie Grissom, 24, her nephew Sean Grissom, 8, and her father, Tom Grissom, 55.

"There's nothing that is ever going to bring closure to it. Nothing will ever make me get over Christa's death," Dianna Hoyt said. "I guess I just want it to be over with and then just try to start all over again."

She said she doesn't hate Rolling, and angry doesn't capture her feelings either. "It's that he did a wrong. The other thing is it is the law of the land," she explained about Rolling's execution.

Carrying out his death sentence will give Dianna Hoyt one thing.

"It brings a peace of mind that he can no longer visualize these monstrous works and think about them again and get any type of joy or satisfaction out of them," she said. "I think of his mind as a videotape and it needs to be burned. It just needs to be destroyed."

While Rolling's life has continued in prison, he has outlived relatives of the students he killed.

Christa Hoyt's father, Gary Hoyt, died in 2000 at the age of 63. Jim Larson, Sonja Larson's father, died of colon cancer in 1996 when he was 67.

His wife, Ada Larson, 68, believes the stress and sorrow over their daughter's death hastened her husband's demise.

At first, Ada Larson said she didn't want to attend Rolling's execution. But now she thinks she should "see it through," for her daughter. "I'm certainly not joyful or anything. I thought it's about time. It's past time," she said.

She just wishes her husband could have been there with her.

All of the families of Rolling's victims plan to have relatives at the prison when he is executed. Some have traveled from out-of-state. Some will be witnesses. Prison officials also have said that others, relatives who do not want to watch the execution but want to be at the prison, will be provided with an area where they can gather and be together.

The unusually high number of relatives of Rolling's victims who want to witness the execution has posed a problem for the prison system.

A corrections spokeswoman last week said that the prison system is working to accommodate all of the families, including relatives in the Louisiana case, as they would do at any execution. She would not provide details about how many or who are listed as witnesses.

But some relatives said they have been told each family could only have a limited number of witnesses. One area law enforcement source also said he was told that extra seats may be added.

A list of witnesses, among them victims' family members, government and legal representatives and media, is set before each execution. At most recent executions, there were more seats than witnesses in the room.

Tracy Paules' sister Laurie Lahey, 42, said she plans to witness the execution.

"I'm not looking forward to it. I have to do it for my sister. It's the last thing I can do for her," Lahey said. There won't be closure. But, she said, "Justice will be served. We don't have to know that he's around anymore."

Lahey said there won't be the paperwork the families have received every time there's a new development in the case or another Rolling appeal. "The annoyance of him will be gone too," she said.

One member of the families who has regularly spoken about the case won't witness the execution. Mario Taboada, 45, Manuel Taboada's brother, said he will come to Gainesville this week but others from his family will be witnesses.

"I asked myself the question, 'Would any good come from me witnessing the execution,' and I really could not come up with an answer," he said.

He also said he doesn't want to hear what Rolling has to say in his final statement.An inmate set for execution is allowed to make a final statement in the execution chamber in front of prison officials and witnesses before the death sentence is carried out.

"I don't want to subject myself to any cynicism or sarcastic remarks that he may make," Mario Taboada said. "Sometimes the best way to get back at somebody is to ignore them."

Lise Fisher can be reached at 374-5092 or fisherl@gvillesun.com.

Florida Supreme Court order - Danny Rolling

2006-10-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/FSCorder.htm

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/Filed_10-19-2006_OrderDenyingPetition.pdf
in PDF

Supreme Court of Florida

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2006

CASE NO.: SC06-2041

DANNY HAROLD ROLLING vs. JAMES R. MCDONOUGH,
ETC., ET AL.
_______________________________________________________________
Petitioner(s) Respondent(s)

Danny Harold Rolling, who is under a pending death warrant with his execution
scheduled for October 25, 2006, has filed a Petition Seeking to Invoke the Court's All
Writs Jurisdiction.

We recently addressed the same claim now asserted by Rolling in
Rutherford v. Crist, Case No. SC06-2023 and denied relief. We find no basis for
distinguishing our decision in Rutherford, and accordingly, Rolling's petition is hereby
denied. No motion for rehearing will be allowed.

It is so ordered.

LEWIS, C.J., and WELLS, ANSTEAD, PARIENTE, QUINCE, CANTERO and
BELL, JJ., concur.

A True Copy
Test:
kb
Served:
ROSA H. CARSON
CLYDE M. TAYLOR, JR.
BAYA HARRISON, III
CAROLYN M. SNURKOWSKI

PETITION SEEKING TO INVOKE THE COURT’S ALL WRITS JURISDICTION - Danny Rolling

2006-10-23T07:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/petition.htm

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/Filed_10-19-2006_RollingPetition.pdf - PDF

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA

CASE NO. SC06-______

DANNY HAROLD ROLLING,
Petitioner,
v.
JAMES R. MCDONOUGH,
Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections, and CHARLES J. CRIST, Attorney
General of Florida,
Respondents.

PETITION SEEKING TO INVOKE THE COURT’S ALL WRITS
JURISDICTION, WITH APPENDIX

Baya Harrison, Esq. Clyde M. Taylor, Jr., Esq.
Florida Bar No. 099568 Fla. Bar No. 129747
310 North Jefferson St. 119 East Park Avenue
Monticello, FL 32344 Tallahassee, FL 32301
Tel: 850. 997.8111 Tel: 850.224.1191
FX: 850. 997.5852 FX: 850.224.0584
Co-counsel for Petitioner Co-counsel for Petitioner
2

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

Florida Supreme Court opinion in Danny Rolling

2006-10-23T07:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/FSCopinion.htm

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/Filed_10-18-2006_Opinion.pdf in PDF

Supreme Court of Florida
____________
No. SC06-1966
____________
DANNY HAROLD ROLLING,
Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.

[October 18, 2006]

PER CURIAM.
Danny Harold Rolling, a prisoner under sentence of death and an active
death warrant, appeals the circuit court’s order denying without an evidentiary
hearing his successive motion for postconviction relief. We have jurisdiction. See
art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons stated below, we affirm the circuit
court’s order.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The execution of Danny Harold Rolling is set for October 25, 2006. The
factual background and procedural history of this case are detailed in this Court’s
opinion on Rolling’s direct appeal. See Rolling v. State, 695 So. 2d 278, 281-83
- 2 -
(Fla. 1997). After initially pleading not guilty, on February 15, 1994, the day
Rolling’s trial was scheduled to begin, he pled guilty to five counts of first-degree
murder, three counts of sexual battery, and three counts of armed burglary of a
dwelling with a battery. Id. at 282. “A penalty phase proceeding was held, and the
jury recommended that Rolling be sentenced to death for each murder by a vote of
twelve to zero. The trial court followed the jury’s advisory recommendation and
sentenced Rolling to death for each homicide . . . .” Id.

This Court affirmed
Rolling’s sentences of death,1 id. at 278, and the United States Supreme Court
denied his petition for writ of certiorari. Rolling v. Florida, 522 U.S. 984 (1997).
Rolling first filed a Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 motion for
postconviction relief in November 1998, and filed an amended motion in April

1. On direct appeal, Rolling raised the following six claims of error: (1) the
trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion for a change of venue and
thereby violated his Sixth Amendment right to be fairly tried by an impartial jury
because pervasive and prejudicial pretrial publicity so infected the Gainesville and
Alachua County community that seating an impartial jury there was patently
impossible; (2) the trial court erred in denying Rolling’s motion to suppress his
statements which were obtained in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to
counsel; (3) the trial court erred in denying Rolling’s motion to sever and conduct
three separate sentencing proceedings; (4) the trial court erred in denying Rolling’s
motion to suppress physical evidence seized from his tent because the warrantless
search and seizure violated his reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth
Amendment; (5) the trial court erred in finding as an aggravating circumstance that
the homicide of Sonya Larson was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel; and
finally (6) the trial court erred by giving an invalid and unconstitutional jury
instruction on the heinous, atrocious, or cruel aggravating circumstance.
- 3 -
1999, raising two claims.2 After conducting an evidentiary hearing, the trial court
denied relief, and this Court affirmed. Rolling v. State, 825 So. 2d 293, 294 (Fla.
2002).

Thereafter, Rolling sought federal habeas relief in the United States District
Court for the Northern District of Florida. The district court denied relief on July
1, 2005, and Rolling appealed. On February 9, 2006, the Eleventh Circuit issued
an opinion affirming the district court’s denial of Rolling’s petition for a writ of
habeas corpus. Rolling v. Crosby, 438 F.3d 1296, 1298 (11th Cir. 2006). The
United States Supreme Court denied certiorari on June 26, 2006. Rolling v.
McDonough, 126 S. Ct. 2943 (2006).

On September 22, 2006, Governor Jeb Bush signed a death warrant
authorizing Rolling’s execution. In response to the signing of the death warrant,
Rolling filed his second 3.851 motion on October 4, 2006, which raised four
claims.3 The State filed a response on October 6, 2006. On October 9, 2006, the
2. The claims were as follows: (1) ineffectiveness of trial counsel regarding
change of venue, and (2) ineffectiveness of trial counsel for failing to challenge
three particular jurors during voir dire.

3. The claims were as follows: (1) access to the files and records pertaining
to Rolling’s case in the possession of certain state agencies has been withheld in
violation of chapter 119, Florida Statutes, the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments
to the United States Constitution, and articles 1, 9, and 17 of the Florida
Constitution; (2) the existing procedure that the State of Florida utilizes for lethal
injection violates the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as it
constitutes cruel and unusual punishment; (3) the administration of pancuronium
bromide violates Rolling’s First Amendment right to free speech; and (4) newly
discovered empirical evidence demonstrates that Rolling’s conviction and sentence
- 4 -
trial court entered its order summarily denying all claims raised in the successive
motion. This appeal follows.

LETHAL INJECTION
Rolling first argues that the trial court erred in denying Rolling’s claim that
Florida’s method of execution by lethal injection violates Rolling’s right to be free
of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of
the United States Constitution, and his right to free speech as guaranteed by the
First Amendment. Rolling also argues that the trial court erred in denying
Rolling’s motion to obtain public records from the Florida Department of
Corrections and the Medical Examiner for the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida
pertaining to autopsy and toxicology reports of persons executed in Florida by
lethal injection and protocols used in the lethal injection process.

This Court has
explained:

Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850(d) provides that a
defendant is entitled to an evidentiary hearing on postconviction
claims for relief unless “the motion, files, and records in the case
conclusively show that the movant is entitled to no relief.” Florida
Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851(f)(5)(B) applies the same standard
to successive postconviction motions in capital cases. In reviewing a
trial court’s summary denial of postconviction relief without an
evidentiary hearing, this Court “must accept all allegations in the
motion as true to the extent they are not conclusively rebutted by the
record.” Hodges v. State, 885 So. 2d 338, 355 (Fla. 2004) (quoting
Gaskin v. State, 737 So. 2d 509, 516 (Fla. 1999)). “To uphold the
of death constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and
Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
- 5 -
trial court’s summary denial of claims raised in a 3.850 motion, the
claims must be either facially invalid or conclusively refuted by the
record.” McLin v. State, 827 So. 2d 948, 954 (Fla. 2002) (quoting
Foster v. Moore, 810 So. 2d 910, 914 (Fla. 2002)).
Rutherford v. State, 926 So. 2d 1100, 1108 (Fla.), cert. denied, 126 S. Ct. 1191
(2006).

We find no error by the trial court under this standard.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

In his first claim, Rolling argues that a research letter published in April
2005 in The Lancet presents new scientific evidence that Florida’s procedure for
carrying out lethal injection may subject the inmate to unnecessary pain. See
Leonidas G. Koniaris et al., Inadequate Anaesthesia in Lethal Injection for
Execution, 365 Lancet 1412 (2005). He supports this claim with an affidavit from
one of the study’s authors, Dr. David A. Lubarsky, asserting that Florida’s
procedure is substantially similar to the procedures used in the other states
evaluated in the study. Rolling ultimately asserts that the information in this study
is new information not previously available to this Court when it decided Sims v.
State, 754 So. 2d 657 (Fla. 2000).

The trial court summarily denied this claim and found that Rolling was not
entitled to an evidentiary hearing on whether lethal injection, as administered in
Florida, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, stating that this Court
determined in Sims, that lethal injection as administered by the Department of
Corrections did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In Hill v. State, 921
- 6 -
So. 2d 579 (Fla.), cert. denied, 126 S. Ct. 1441 (2006), this Court addressed the
same claim now asserted by Rolling and upheld the trial court’s summary denial of
the claim. We again rejected such a claim in Rutherford v. State, 926 So. 2d at
1113-14. As in those cases, we affirm the trial court’s summary denial of this
claim in Rolling’s case.

First Amendment Claim

Rolling next asserts that the circuit court erred in denying an evidentiary
hearing on his claim that the administration of pancuronium bromide violates his
free speech rights as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States
Constitution. Specifically, Rolling contends that the administration of
pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscles, violates his right to free
speech because it renders him unable to communicate any feeling of pain that may
result if the execution procedure is carried out improperly. Thus, Rolling’s claim
is inextricably intertwined with his claim that there is a possibility that the first
chemical, sodium pentothal, will not be administered properly, leaving him wholly
or partially conscious.

The circuit court summarily denied this claim. In Rutherford, this Court
addressed the same claim and found that, because the defendant could not
demonstrate that the chemicals involved in lethal injection would be administered
improperly in his case, the defendant was not entitled to relief on this claim. 926
- 7 -
So. 2d at 1114-15. Therefore, as in Rutherford, we find Rolling’s identical First
Amendment claim to be without merit and find no error in the trial court’s denial
applying our decision in Rutherford.

Public Records Claim

Rolling next argues that the circuit court erred in denying an evidentiary
hearing on his claims arising from his public records requests. On September 28,
2006, Rolling filed a motion for production of additional public records to the
Florida Medical Examiner’s Office of the Eighth Circuit of Florida and the
Department of Corrections, and a motion for serological samples and for
independent testing to the trial court.

Rolling requested autopsy reports and
toxicology studies performed on the sixteen individuals executed by lethal
injection from 2000 to 2005 and all documents related to the Department of
Corrections’ administration of lethal injection and Rolling’s own medical records.
He also requested to have independent testing of post-execution blood samples of
Arthur Rutherford, scheduled for execution on October 18, 2006. The State filed
responses opposing each of these requests.

On October 4, 2006, the trial court
entered an order denying Rolling’s motion for production of additional public
records and motion for serological samples and for independent testing because
Rolling had served this public records request six days after Governor Bush signed
Rolling’s death warrant on September 22, 2006. The trial court stated that Rolling
- 8 -
was entitled to his own medical records as long as he complies with Department of
Corrections regulations. Rolling then argued that the withholding of public records
violates chapter 119, Florida Statutes, the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to
the United States Constitution, and article I, sections 9 and 17 of the Florida
Constitution. The circuit court denied this claim.

Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.852(h)(3) applies to cases in which a
mandate was issued prior to the effective date of the rule. The effective date of the
rule was October 1, 1998, and this Court affirmed Rolling’s conviction and death
sentence on March 20, 1997.

The rule states:
Within 10 days of the signing of a defendant’s death warrant,
collateral counsel may request in writing the production of public
records from a person or agency from which collateral counsel has
previously requested public records. A person or agency shall copy,
index, and deliver to the repository any public record:
(A) that was not previously the subject of an objection;
(B) that was received or produced since the previous request; or
(C) that was, for any reason, not produced previously.
Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.852(h)(3) (emphasis added).

Because there is no evidence in the
record that Rolling has ever requested records from the Medical Examiner’s Office
or the Department of Corrections before his September 28, 2006 request, we find
that the trial court was correct in denying this claim without an evidentiary hearing.
See also Rutherford, 926 So. 2d at 1115-17 (denying the substantially same records
request because the defendant failed to demonstrate that he had previously
- 9 -
requested records concerning lethal injection in Florida, and reasoning that rule
3.852(h)(3) “is designed to allow an update of records previously requested”).

THE ABA REPORT

Rolling asserted a claim in the trial court that the American Bar Association
report entitled Evaluating Fairness and Accuracy in the State Death Penalty
System: The Florida Death Penalty Assessment Report, published September 17,
2006, constitutes newly discovered evidence proving that imposition of the death
penalty is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of
the United States Constitution. The trial court denied this claim.

We recently
addressed this issue in Rutherford v. State, Nos. SC06-1931 & SC06-1946 (Fla.
Oct. 12, 2006), wherein we concluded that the ABA Report is not newly
discovered evidence because it “is a compilation of previously available
information related to Florida’s death penalty system and consists of legal analysis
and recommendations for reform, many of which are directed to the executive and
legislative branches.” Id., slip op. at 10. We also held that nothing in the report
would cause this Court to recede from its past decisions upholding the facial
constitutionality of the death penalty, and that the defendant did not allege how any
of the conclusions in the report would render his individual death sentence
unconstitutional. Id., slip op. at 11.

For these same reasons, we affirm the circuit
court’s summary denial of Rolling’s claim.
- 10 -

CONCLUSION

For the reasons explained above, we affirm the circuit court’s order denying
Rolling’s successive motion for postconviction relief. No motion for rehearing
will be entertained.

It is so ordered.

LEWIS, C.J., and WELLS, ANSTEAD, PARIENTE, QUINCE, CANTERO, and
BELL, JJ., concur.
NO MOTION FOR REHEARING WILL BE ALLOWED.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Alachua County,
Stan R. Morris, Judge - Case No. 91-3832-CFA
Baya Harrison, Monticello, Florida and Clyde M. Taylor, Jr., Tallahassee, Florida,
for Appellant
Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General and Carolyn M. Snurkowski, Assistant
Deputy General Counsel, Tallahassee, Florida,
for Appellee

Notice of supplemental authority - Danny Rolling

2006-10-23T05:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/noticesupplemental.htm

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/Filed_10-13-2006_NoticeSupplemental.pdf - in PDF

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA

DANNY ROLLING,
Appellant,

v. CASE NO. SC06-1966
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
____________________/
NOTICE OF SUPPLEMENTAL AUTHORITY

COMES NOW State of Florida, by and through undersigned
counsel, and hereby gives notice of its intent to rely upon the
following additional authority:

The State Answerbrief - Danny Rolling

2006-10-23T04:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/answerbrief.htm

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/Filed_10-12-2006_StateAnswer.pdf in PDF

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA

DANNY HAROLD ROLLING,
Appellant,

v. CASE NO. SC06-1966

EXECUTION SET
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER
25, 2006 at
6:00P.M.

STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
__________________________/
ON APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT
OF THE FIRST JUDICIAL CIRCUIT,
IN AND FOR ESCAMBIA COUNTY, FLORIDA

ANSWER BRIEF OF APPELLEE

CHARLES J. CRIST, JR.
ATTORNEY GENERAL

CAROLYN M. SNURKOWSKI
ASSISTANT DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL
FLORIDA BAR NO. 158541
(850) 414 3300; FAX (850) 487-0997
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
THE CAPITOL
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA 32399-1050

COUNSEL FOR APPELLEE

Initial brief by Baya Harrison - Danny Rolling

2006-10-23T04:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/inibrief.htm

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/Filed_10-12-2006_RollingBrief.pdf - in PDF

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORDIA

DANNY HAROLD ROLLING
Indigent Defendant

Court Appointed Counsel

Appellant,
vs. Case No. SC83638
L.C. No. 91-3832-CF-A
STATE OF FLORIDA

Appellee. Defendant under Death Warrant,
____________________________/ Execution Set For 10/25/06.

INITIAL BRIEF OF APPELLANT
__________________________________________________________________
On appeal from a Final Order of the Circuit Court of the Eighth Judicial Circuit, in
and for Alachua County, Florida, rendered on October 9, 2006, denying Rolling’s
successor post conviction motion to vacate his death sentences filed per the
provisions of Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851, and from an October 4,
2006 Order denying his request for Public Records.
__________________________________________________________________
Baya Harrison, Esq.
Counsel for Appellant

Florida Supreme Court scheduling order - Danny Rolling

2006-10-23T04:41:00.000-07:00

Florida Supreme Court scheduling order :

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/Filed_09-27-2006_SchedulingOrder.pdf

Notice of appeal filed - Danny Rolling

2006-10-23T04:40:00.000-07:00

Notice of appeal filed :

http://www.oranous.com/florida/DannyRolling/Filed_10-10-2006_NoticeAppeal.pdf

Evil among us: Three days that changed our city forever

2006-10-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

Evil among us: Three days that changed our city forever

By LISE FISHER
Sun staff writer

October 22. 2006 6:01AM

Newer residents would not recognize the Gainesville of fall 1990, when five college students were brutally slain in their homes and life in the city turned into a horror story overnight.Women - and men - were too afraid to walk alone after dark, certain they could fall prey to the killer.

A helicopter routinely buzzed overhead, shining a wary, watchful spotlight across the University of Florida campus. College students who had scrambled to find their own dorm room or apartment before classes started sought safety in groups, taking shifts sleeping and keeping guard over bolted doors and locked windows.

And everyone lived in fear, worried each time police sirens wailed that a murderer had struck again.There was an evil in the college town's midst.

And Gainesville had suddenly learned no place, no matter how quiet or out-of-the-way, is absolutely safe.For those who lived here at the time, it was a painful, depressing lesson and one that for some has been resurrected by convicted killer Danny Rolling's scheduled execution at Florida State Prison north of Starke Wednesday at 6 p.m.

"The week prior to the murders, things were on the up note around town. There was a brand new president at UF. There was a brand new football coach. I saw that up note turn into a grip of fear," said Spencer Mann, an investigator and spokesman for the 8th Judicial Circuit State Attorney's Office in Gainesville.Sixteen years ago, Mann was working at the Alachua County Sheriff's Office when officers began making the grisly discoveries.

Each day headlines reported another body had been found, another suspect had been named, or another slew of students had left UF, too frightened to remain in town.Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach, and Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville, both UF freshmen, were the first to be found slain in their Williamsburg Village apartment on SW 16th Street on Aug. 26, 1990, the Sunday before classes were set to start.

The next day, officers located the body of 18-year-old Alachua County Sheriff's Office records clerk Christa Leigh Hoyt, of Archer, in the duplex apartment on SW 24th Avenue, where she lived alone.On Aug. 28, 1990, the bodies of Tracy Paules and Manuel "Manny" Taboada, both 23, high school friends from Miami, were discovered in their Gatorwood apartment off Archer Road.

The crime scenes were the worst he has ever seen, said Alachua County Sheriff's Lt. LeGran Hewitt, one of the officers assigned to a multi-agency joint task force investigating the killings.Each of the five students had been stabbed multiple times, sometimes as they struggled to overcome an attacker who surprised them as they slept or as they stepped into their apartment.

Three of the women were sexually battered. Some of the bodies had been mutilated and posed. One had been decapitated.Nine anxious months would pass after the killings before Rolling, a drifter and career criminal from Louisiana, was publicly named a suspect in 1991.And, although many college students returned to Gainesville about a week after the killings, others said it seemed like a lifetime before they felt safe in the city.

Media from around the state and world flocked to Gainesville, with then-CBS News anchor Dan Rather calling the city "perhaps the most dangerous place in America." Phone lines at law enforcement agencies registered thousands of calls from residents looking for information or offering tips, everything from reports that a boyfriend had behaved strangely to someone spotted wearing camouflage clothing.

Whistles and alarms were distributed to students. Concealed-weapon permit applications quickly rose in Alachua County. Then UF President John Lombardi told students who left town fearing for their safety they would be welcomed back without penalty., leaving professors trying to honor his promise.

Some people believed there was a Ted Bundy copycat on the loose, Mann recalled. A serial killer and rapist, Bundy had been executed in Florida the year before the attacks in Gainesville.Days after the bodies were discovered, officers were looking at several suspects, including a car salesman wanted in the mutilation-murder of his former girlfriend in Ohio. Also among them was a UF freshman, Edward Humphrey.

The 18-year-old had begun exhibiting bizarre behavior after he stopped taking medicine prescribed for manic depression and, when questioned by officers, implied he knew about the murders. Circumstantial evidence seemed to connect Humphrey to the slayings, such as a claim he had been romantically interested in one of the victims, dressed in military-type fatigues and went on late-night "reconnaissance missions" carrying a hunting knife.

In October 1990, Humphrey was convicted on a lesser charge of battery, after prosecutors alleged he had beaten his grandmother in Brevard County on Aug. 29, 1990. But he ultimately was dropped as a suspect in the Gainesville slayings.Still, some in Gainesville refused to accept Humphrey wasn't involved. Others speculated not one but two killers were stalking students. Just one person couldn't be responsible for the savage slayings, they reasoned.

Meanwhile, 10 days after the killings, Rolling had ended up in custody at the Marion County jail where he was being held on robbery charges. Then 36 years old, Rolling had a history of robbery and theft convictions and left Shreveport, La., shortly after he was accused of shooting his father, a retired police officer.

He was added to a list of suspects in the Gainesville slayings after Florida authorities learned he could be connected to a similar, triple killing in Louisiana. DNA evidence was gathered from Rolling, who had been jailed in September 1990, and compared to crime scene evidence.Hewitt, now with the Civil Bureau at the Sheriff's Office, interviewed Rolling at Florida State Prison near Starke where he first confessed to officers he was the killer.

In 1994, as jury selection began, Rolling entered a guilty plea to the slayings. "I've been running from first one thing and then the other my whole life . . .," Rolling said. "There are some things you just can't run away from, and this is one of those." The three-man, nine-woman jury unanimously agreed on the death penalty, a sentence later handed down by Circuit Judge Stan Morris.

Rolling, now 52, has been held at prisons in Bradford and Union counties during his years on Florida's Death Row. He has continued to draw and write poems, among them works that have made their way to online sites that sell collectibles from convicted killers.

Some thought Rolling's guilty plea, coupled with the heinous nature of his crimes, would speed up the appeals process."Five years," Mario Taboada yelled at the man who killed his brother, Manuel, in an Alachua County courtroom. "You're going down in five!"Instead, it was 12 years, about the average span of time for a death penalty appeal, before Gov. Jeb Bush signed Rolling's death warrant on Sept. 22.

Over the years, Rolling's lawyers have argued he should have been given a new sentencing hearing because it was impossible for an Alachua County jury, living in a community traumatized by the killings, to fairly hear the case.Questions over the state's lethal injection process have dominated the courts this year and have been at the heart of Rolling's latest appeals.

The U.S. Supreme Court had stayed one Florida Death Row inmate's execution in January to review if federal civil rights law could be used by an inmate to challenge the state's execution method. In June, the justices unanimously ruled lethal injection could be appealed as unconstitutionally cruel punishment and sent the case back to the lower courts.Weeks later Bush, who had halted executions while the appeal was before the U.S. Supreme Court, again started signing death warrants, saying he wanted to urge the courts to decide the case. Two inmates have since died by lethal injection.

Meanwhile, the state and federal courts have rejected arguments that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.This week Rolling and his attorneys are waiting for a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.Rolling's "infamous notoriety" has some worried over what will happen outside Florida State Prison if he's executed.

Death penalty opponents fear the scene could turn into a circus, reminiscent of the 1989 execution of serial killer Ted Bundy when hundreds gathered and cheered at news of his death. Officers expect a crowd, especially since the prison is less than an hour's drive from Gainesville.But Bradford County Sheriff Bob Milner, whose office helps provide security during executions, said deputies don't expect problems.

Like the families of Rolling's victims, Hewitt sees the execution, set for Wednesday, as a long-awaited, last step in a lengthy legal process. Many have called for Rolling's death. But it won't bring closure, he said."I believe that it's the final process in the judicial system that is owed to us as the public," Hewitt explained. "People talk about closure. But I don't believe closure will ever happen. The only way it would make it better would be if we could put the loved ones with their families. They've lost loved ones and there's no closure to that."

Killer Rolling's Appeal Is Denied

2006-10-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

STARKE -- A federal appeals court in Atlanta on Friday turned down the latest appeal of serial killer Danny Harold Rolling, who is scheduled to die Wednesday for the slayings of five college students in Gainesville in 1990.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Rolling's motion for a stay of execution and denied him permission to file new appeals in the U.S. District Court in Tallahassee.

Baya Harrison, the lawyer representing Rolling, filed documents using the same issues raised by Arthur Rutherford, who was executed Wednesday at Florida State Prison for the 1985 murder of a Milton woman.

Those included challenges to the chemicals used in the execution process, the America Bar Association's report on Florida's capital punishment system and claims that application of Florida's death penalty is inconsistent and freakishly imposed.

Rolling pleaded guilty in 1994 to the string of murders, and a judge followed a jury's unanimous recommendation that he be sentenced to death for each of the five killings.

Rolling terrorized Gainesville in late August and early September 1990, killing four women and a man in their off-campus apartments. One victim was decapitated and others were mutilated, posed and sexually assaulted.

Killed were Christa Hoyt, 18, of Gainesville; Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Christa Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; Tracy Paules, 23, and Manny Taboada, 23, both of Miami.

A death isn't worthy of our celebration

2006-10-21T07:29:00.000-07:00

It looks like Danny Rolling will be executed for his heinous crimes. I was in Gainesville during the time when this horrible act occurred. It seems absurd to me that the legal process took so long to reach its conclusion!

Nonetheless, I hope for the families involved, that they find some sort of solace for their terrible, irreplaceable losses. I do want to say though, that celebrating someone's death, no mater how deserved, is an unfortunate way to feel. I can never celebrate death. After all, isn't that what Danny Rolling was doing when he committed those unspeakable crimes?

Jeff L. Laskin, Gainesville

Supreme Court is last chance for Rolling

2006-10-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

By LISE FISHER

Sun Staff writer

A federal appellate court in Atlanta rejected serial killer Danny Rolling's appeal Friday to stay his execution, set for next week.

Barring any new, last-minute claims, the decision leaves Rolling's attorneys looking to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his death sentence.

Rolling has been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Florida State Prison in Bradford County.

Carolyn Snurkowski, assistant deputy attorney general for the state, said Friday she didn't know what options Rolling's attorneys would have.

"His last remaining option is to request that the United States Supreme Court take the case. Barring something that would be out of the ordinary, I would expect the same result that was obtained in Rutherford," said State Attorney Bill Cervone in Gainesville.

Rolling's appeal relied on the same failed claims made by Death Row inmate Arthur Rutherford. The handyman, convicted for the 1985 murder of a Milton woman, was executed earlier this week.

The appeal had challenged chemicals used in lethal injections and cited an American Bar Association report on the death penalty process in Florida, saying it was newly discovered evidence showing lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.

A former inmate who served prison time for robbery, Rolling was a suspect in a 1989 triple slaying in Louisiana.

He was being held in Marion County for a robbery when he became a suspect in the slayings of five Gainesville college students.

Killed were Christa Hoyt, 18, of Archer; Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Tracy Paules, 23, of Miami; Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; and Manuel Taboada, 23, of Miami.

In 1994, Rolling pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing the five inside their off-campus apartments. Three of the female students had been sexually assaulted.

Some of the bodies had been mutilated.

Lise Fisher can be reached at 374-5092 or fisherl@gvillesun.com.

A killer is born; Psychologists say dad's cruelty led to the murders

2006-10-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

By DREW HARWELL
Alligator Writer

"He was always trying to get rid of that - that person that his daddy made him believe he was," Claudia would say about Rolling in a 1992 videotaped testimony. "He had no self-esteem. No self-worth."

He was 11 when he began to play guitar, writing and singing his own songs. Krop said playing the guitar was something Rolling felt good at and satisfied with. He wanted to be a songwriter, attract women and become famous.

Also about this time he developed a drinking problem. What he couldn't get from friends, he stole.

"He used it for avoidance, escape," Krop said. "It was self-medication for the emotional pain he was experiencing."

When the family fell asleep one night, Rolling snuck out of the house and spent several nights in nearby woods. He spent his time fantasizing of violence and control.

Twenty-four years later, he would set up campsites in the woods near his victims, and his sadistic fantasies would become real.

His voyeurism, which began innocently as he watched other families, became sexually motivated. He was caught peeking in windows to watch girls shower and undress.

Rolling was 15 when he slit his wrists. He had seen his mother do the same only four years earlier after an argument with his father.

"I tried," he scrawled on the bathroom mirror in his mother's lipstick. "I just can't make it."

His father had told him that he would be dead or in jail by 15.

Rolling almost proved him right.

A failed father

After Rolling dropped out of high school in 1971, he enlisted in the Air Force, where he excelled in his course work but drank heavily, smoked marijuana and used LSD.

An Air Force psychiatrist diagnosed him with a personality disorder, and he was discharged for drug problems and stealing a bicycle.

He returned to Shreveport, a town and a life he had run away from just months ago, and began to attend King's Temple United Pentecostal Church. It was there he met O'Mather Halko, a petite dark-haired woman who Rolling believed was an answer to his prayers for companionship. The two married in 1974 and had a daughter, Kiley, a year later. Their marriage would only last three years, and he drank, couldn't keep a job and suffered from impotence.
Despite his faults, Rolling was enraged when Halko filed for a divorce in 1977. (Rolling would later say his ex-wife looked like 18-year-old Christa Hoyt, his sixth murder and the most violent: He would stab the freshman through the back, cut off her nipples and place her severed head on a bookshelf.)

Rolling became a drifter. He committed armed robberies in Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia. The police caught him as he left a Columbus, Ga., Winn-Dixie supermarket with $956 in stolen cash, and he was sentenced to six years in prison.

There, he lifted weights, boxed and took pride in his power. Inmates sometimes called him "psycho" after watching him fight. Krop said the guards and inmates cruelly abused him, adding to the wounds inflicted by his father.

After his release, he hitchhiked across the country, stopping with relatives who would take him in. In 1985, Rolling held up another supermarket and was arrested.

During a conversation with his defense attorney, Arthur Carlisle, Rolling presented a bizarre alternative to returning to prison: He would let them cut off his hands. Rolling was sentenced to four years in a Mississippi jail for armed robbery.

"Rolling had impulse-control problems: basically, not really thinking through the consequences of his actions," Krop said. "He was very emotionally immature."

Rolling returned in 1988 to Shreveport after being paroled. On Nov. 4, 1989, Rolling was fired from his job at a Poncho's restaurant. Rather than taking the rejection quietly - as he had done so many times before - he lashed out at his manager for leaving a couple dollars off his paycheck, and threatened violence.

That night, he killed for the first time.

A murderer

Julie Grissom, 24, was raped and murdered. Her father, Tom Grissom, and his 8-year-old grandson Sean, were also killed. Three generations of the Grissom family, stabbed to death.
Rolling positioned Julie's body with her legs spread and hair carefully fanned onto her bed. She was discovered with tape marks on her wrists and bite marks on her breasts. His arranging of his victims' corpses would become his signature.

Rolling had watched Julie as she worked at a Dillard's department store in Shreveport's South Park Mall. Krop said on the night of Rolling's first murders, his voyeurism and sadistic fantasies escalated into reality.

"Rolling couldn't stand the idea of their family being happy," Krop said.

It would only be several months before he killed again.

Rolling wasn't hiding his anger and frustration any longer. During an argument at his parents' home, he shot his father in the stomach and head. His father lived. Rolling ran.

Rolling's love-hate relationship with his father would continue to affect him months after the shooting. In the nights before his Gainesville murders, he recorded messages that both cursed and forgave his father.

"His father had been ... emotionally and physically abusive to him when he was younger, yet Rolling continues to say, 'I love him,'" psychiatrist Robert Sadoff would later say.

Rolling fled Shreveport and took a bus to Sarasota before finally ending up in Gainesville. Krop said he was excited at the prospect of a college town. He set up a campsite in woods near Archer Road with a tent and a mattress he had bought at a Gainesville Wal-Mart. It was at this store that he had seen his first two victims: two UF freshman girls, Sonja Larson, 18, and Christina Powell, 17, buying things for their new apartment.

They were several aisles over as he walked through the checkout with a stolen screwdriver, roll of duct tape and two pairs of gloves. After shopping, he followed the girls to their Williamsburg Village apartment.

He watched through their window as they washed dishes. In his black outfit, ski mask and athletic gloves, he waited until 3 a.m. before he crept up to their second-floor apartment.

Sixteen steps up the cracked white staircase, and the horror began.

"Your honor, I've been running from first one problem and then another all my life," he would later say to Judge Stan Morris.

"But there are some things you just can't run from, and this is one of those."

About this story

Information for this article was taken from Mary S. Ryzuk's "The Gainesville Ripper" and John Philpin and John Donnelly's "Beyond Murder." Articles from The Independent Florida Alligator, St. Petersburg Times and The Gainesville Sun were used. An interview with Harry Krop was also used in the reporting of this article.

Killer's execution date nears; memories of terror stir Fla. town

2006-10-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The terror started late on a Sunday afternoon in August 1990, just before the fall semester began.

A police officer, summoned by worried parents, discovered the first two bodies in an apartment near the University of Florida campus. Freshmen roommates Sonja Larson, 18, and Christina Powell, 17, were fatally stabbed and sliced up with a razor-sharp KA-BAR hunting knife.

Just after midnight, before the news of the gruesome killings had a chance to take hold, Christa Hoyt, 18, a Santa Fe Community College student and sheriff's office employee, was found mutilated in her apartment, her severed head placed on a shelf.

The next morning, UF students Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada, both 23, were found slaughtered in the apartment they shared nearby, plunging the laid-back college town into a full-fledged panic.

Students fled, neighbors huddled together for protection, residents armed themselves. Innocence was lost. Many lives were changed forever.

The manufacturer of this nightmare was a drawling police officer's son and career criminal from Shreveport, La., named Danny Harold Rolling. After a dozen years on death row, the now 52-year-old Rolling is preparing to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Florida State Prison in Starke.

Thousands of UF students have come and gone since Rolling arrived on a Greyhound bus, pitched a tent in the woods near campus and set out to become, as he would say later, a "superstar" among criminals.

But those students and residents who lived through the worst chapter in the city's history locked away indelible memories that are surfacing again as the execution date nears.

"It was terrible, because it was an event that unfolded day by day," recalled Larry Reimer, a minister whose United Church of Gainesville offered shelter to frightened college students. "We didn't know the magnitude of it until we were in the middle of it. To wake up each morning to news that another young person was found dead was terrifying."

As the body count rose, Gainesville Police Chief Wayland Clifton called for help from the FBI, the Florida Highway Patrol and other agencies. By midweek, heavily armed officers were ubiquitous on the streets, and helicopters with searchlights a nightly reminder that a serial killer was still on the loose.

UF President John Lombardi canceled classes for the week, and the world's media descended on Gainesville to cover the story.

"What was interesting was how quiet the student areas got," said Ronald Dupont Jr., who was attending UF and working as a night police reporter at The Gainesville Sun. "A lot of people left town, and a lot of people were holed in their homes genuinely afraid. It turned the town from a happy-go-lucky college town into almost like a wake."

Steve Spurrier was preparing for the first game of what would be a storied football coaching career at his alma mater when the murders shook campus.

"It was a terrible time in Gainesville," said Spurrier, now head coach at the University of South Carolina. "We actually allowed a lot of our older players to stay where their girlfriends were because of it. Maybe football helped (the healing), but it was certainly one of the worst tragedies that ever happened in Gainesville."

The focus of the task force first fell on a UF student who was unfortunate enough to go off his psychotropic medication and begin acting strangely around town after the slayings. He was eventually cleared.

Meanwhile, Rolling robbed a bank and stole a car before leaving Gainesville the day after the last bodies were discovered. Belongings he left at the campsite in the woods would eventually link him to the slayings.

Rolling's name first came to the attention of investigators because he was suspect in the similar mutilation slayings of three people back in Shreveport (he later confessed, but was never prosecuted).

But it would be December 1990 before they would find him sitting in the Marion County jail a half hour south of Gainesville, awaiting trial for robbing a grocery store there. DNA confirmed he was the killer.

Rolling pleaded guilty as trial began on Feb. 15, 1994. In the penalty phase, jurors rejected arguments that he should be spared because of an abusive father, unhappy childhood and history of drug use and mental illness. Judge Stan R. Morris sentenced him to die.

Dianna Hoyt, Christa Hoyt's stepmother, said Rolling's execution has been eagerly awaited by the victims' families. Some will be inside the prison to witness it.

"What he did was so horrendous, how he tortured our children," Hoyt said. "I think this man can still find enjoyment from that. I just need his mind put to sleep. I don't need him thinking about it anymore."

Sadie Darnell, who was the police department's media spokeswoman at the time and developed enduring friendships with the victims' families, said Rolling's execution still matters, even if it also provides him more of the notoriety he sought.

"It does not symbolize closure for any of the family members. Retribution, though, is important because it represents that our society is holding that person accountable," said Darnell, now a candidate for Alachua County sheriff.

Today's UF students may know the names of the victims because they're painted on a panel on the edge of campus, a memorial that fraternities took responsibility for preserving.

Besides being part of the university's history, said Christopher Bucciarelli, president of the UF Interfraternity Council, it's a reminder _ "for everyone to be careful and to be safe."

Appeals Court Rejects Rolling's Latest Challenge

2006-10-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

POSTED: 1:58 pm EDT October 20, 2006

UPDATED: 2:39 pm EDT October 20, 2006

STARKE, Fla. -- A federal appeals court in Atlanta turned down the latest appeal of serial killer Danny Rolling on Friday.

Rolling is scheduled to die on Wednesday for the slayings of five college students in Gainesville in 1990.

The court rejected his motion for a stay of execution and denied him permission to file new appeals in the U.S. District Court in Tallahassee. His lawyer filed documents using the same issues raised by Arthur Rutherford, who was executed Wednesday at Florida StatePrison for the 1985 murder of a Milton woman.

Those included challenges to the chemicals used in the execution process, the American Bar Association's report on Florida's capital punishment system and claims that application of Florida's death penalty is inconsistent and "freakishly imposed."

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Rolling Running Out of Options

2006-10-18T17:08:00.000-07:00

By Dan Breitwieser, WCJB TV 20 News

Convicted killer Danny Rolling has run out of legal options in Florida.

The Florida Supreme Sourt denied Rolling's appeal Wednesday to give a stay to his execution. A jury sentenced Rolling to death for killing five Gainesville-area college students in the fall of 1990.

Rolling has made almost identical appeals arguments as those of Arthur Rutherford, another convicted murderer who was executed earlier this evening.

State Attorney Bill Cervone says Rolling has an uphill battle ahead of him.

"For his execution to be stayed, the court is going to have to reverse path on what they've been doing very recently," Cervone said. "And also ... potentially what they would be doing by allowing Rutherford to be executed today."

Rolling can appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals court. If that's rejected, he can seek review from the U.S. Supreme Court. He's scheduled to die at 6 P.M. a week from Wednesday

Court rejects challenge to death penalty

2006-10-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

By NATHAN CRABBE

Sun staff writer

The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected claims that newly released information on the death penalty should delay an execution scheduled for today.

Now attorneys for condemned killer Arthur Rutherford will turn to the federal courts in a last-ditch effort to stop the execution.

The case could provide an indication whether Gainesville serial killer Danny Rolling's execution goes forward as planned next week.

Rutherford is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. today at Florida State Prison in Raiford. His attorney, Linda McDermott, said a document released this week reveals the state made secret changes to the lethal injection process.

"At a minimum, we need to have the opportunity to review this," she said.

The new details are part of a document adopted by the Florida Department of Corrections in August, which had previously not been made public. The document for the first time outlines the exact amount of drugs used in executions and provides more information about the procedure than previously revealed.

Corrections Secretary James McDonough intended the document to provide transparency in the execution process. The document doesn't make any major changes to the process other than requiring drug tests of executioners, said Robby Cunningham, department spokesman.

"It really just spelled out the process that already existed," he said.

The Florida Supreme Court agreed, rejected Rutherford's petition by a 6-0 margin. The seventh justice, Justice Kenneth Bell, recused himself from the case.

"Our review of the current lethal injection procedures ... reveals nothing that would cause this court to revisit our previous conclusions that procedures for administering the lethal injection as attested do not violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment," the court wrote in its opinion.

Rutherford's attorneys will now turn to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court to try to stop the execution. A ruling in his favor could also delay the scheduled Oct. 25 execution of Danny Rolling, who murdered five Gainesville college students in 1990.

Rolling's attorney, Baya Harrison, said he'll push the same issues in that case."We're going to piggyback on anything that the Rutherford legal team does," he said.

Attorneys across the country in recent months have claimed the lethal injection process is flawed and could cause extreme pain. Many have cited a study by University of Miami medical school physicians, which found that post-death blood concentrations of anesthetic were lower than required for surgery in 43 of 49 executed inmates in other states.

David Lubrasky, chairman of the school's anesthesiology department and study co-author, said the new document shows that massive amounts of drugs are being used in Florida executions. But he said that doesn't mean the drugs are being administrated by trained medical professionals.

"In my hands, I could kill you with them," he said. "In the hands of someone who didn't know what they were doing, it could be a different story."

Rutherford, 57, was sentenced to death for the 1985 drowning of a 63-year-old Milton woman in her bathtub. He had been scheduled to be executed in January, following condemned cop killer Clarence Hill.

The U.S. Supreme Court halted both executions, later ruling Hill could use federal civil rights law to claim lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment. But the court last month allowed Hill to be executed before those claims could be heard.Attorney Todd Doss of Lake City, who represented Hill, filed a request Friday for information on the lethal injection procedure. He received the document Monday outlining the procedure.

He said the state had an ethical duty to release the information before Hill's execution.

"To say you're doing justice while hiding something like this is a farce," he said.Carolyn Snurkowski, assistant deputy attorney general for the state, said major aspects of the lethal injection procedure haven't changed. She said the types of drugs and order in which they are administered have stayed the same since the state instituted lethal injection for the death penalty in 2000.

"There's nothing new in there," she said.

In its filing to the Florida Supreme Court, Rutherford's attorneys say several changes to the procedure are substantial. They include a requirement that a member of the execution team buys and maintains the lethal drugs, more detailed descriptions about the amount of chemicals used in executions and an alternate procedure if a vein can't be located.

While the court rejected the petition, Justice Harry Lee Anstead said in a separate opinion that he was troubled by the fact that the state hadn't made its execution procedure public and no hearings have been held on what takes places during an execution.

"Now that this method of execution has been in place for a number of years we would all benefit by such a hearing," he wrote.

A Killer's Grip

2006-10-15T23:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBUDHFZATE.html

October 15, 2006

Florida

A Killer's Grip

By MARY SHEDDEN,

The Tampa Tribune

The news hit late on a sweltering Sunday night in August.On the eve of the fall semester of 1990, two young women - college freshmen- had been attacked and killed in their apartment, blocks from theUniversity of Florida campus.

The next morning, 36,000 students arrived at their first classes of theschool year. Chatter about the slayings soon turned into panic: Another victim - another young woman - was found mutilated in her tiny, off-campusduplex.

What had appeared to be a random attack was now a killing spree.Focus shifted. Academics didn't matter. Friends rushed to call one another.Anxious parents reading the news back home did the same, wanting to heartheir child's voice. Apartments designed for two or three became bunkhousesfor friends worried about sleeping alone.

The next day's arrival was shouldered with fear and sadness. Theannouncement of two more stabbing deaths - this time a 23-year-old woman andher burly male roommate - brought screams of disbelief.

Five found dead in 48 hours.Professors canceled classes. Parents who called just a day before drove toGainesville, insisting their children come home until the killer was caught.A safety forum turned ugly as 1,200 students demanded more information sothey could defend themselves. Customers mobbed a local gun shop."People, they just wanted something to get someone off their back," saidHarry Beckwith, owner of a Gainesville gun shop for 50 years. "Guns, stunguns, ray guns, Taser guns, anything.

"The terror that enveloped Gainesville 16 years ago has faded. UF is vibrant,boasting more than 50,000 students.

The murders are memories: The victims

today are primarily known as five stark names listed on a landmark graffitiwall. News these days is about tuition and the football team's return tonational dominance.The killer, 52-year-old Danny Harold Rolling, awaits execution Oct. 25 forthe five murders, three rapes and three burglaries that launched the largestcriminal investigation in state history.

Raw emotional wounds that neverquite healed are opening again for those who remember how this Louisianarobber with a passion for melodramatic poetry and crooning country tunesterrorized a town and frightened an entire state.

Keeping The Memories AliveMost students on campus today were in preschool in 1990. To them, themurders of Sonja Larson, 18; Christina Powell, 17; Christa Hoyt, 18; TracyPaules, 23; and Manuel Taboada, 23, are historic, memorialized around town.That's why Hoyt's stepmother returns to campus every year. In amatter-of-fact lecture to journalism students,

Dianna Hoyt recounts learningabout Christa's murder, rape and decapitation in news reports. She showschildhood pictures of her bright, petite stepdaughter nicknamed "Glowworm.""This could be my mom or my stepmom in here," Professor Kim Walsh-Childerssaid the students often say after Hoyt's lecture. "That could have been me."That connection and the youthfulness of the five victims are reasons

Floridians were gripped by the case, said Rod Smith, the state attorney whoprosecuted Rolling.They were all-American kids from Miami, Jacksonville, Deerfield Beach, CarolCity and Archer. They dreamed of being architects and lawyers. They workedon the high school yearbook, played in the band.

Four of the five victimswere students at UF, the state's flagship university with a long roster ofalumni with memories of their days in Gainesville. The other was a studentat Santa Fe Community College."There was a sense of the magnitude of this loss. You were losing the bestand the brightest," said Smith, who recently returned to a private lawpractice in Gainesville after serving as a state senator and running forgovernor.

Clyde Taylor, a Tallahassee lawyer who represents Rolling in his federalappeals, comes from a long line of UF graduates. While Taylor's client waskilling, Taylor's younger daughter - a slight, attractive brunette - hadjust returned for her junior year."I had a pretty hectic trial practice, but I remember it very clearly,"Taylor said. "I remember we talked about her coming home. I think she evencame home for the weekend."Despite the fear, Taylor said he never wanted vengeance.

"I'm a defense lawyer," he said. "I just don't think in those terms."Taylor said the death penalty should be reserved for those who makeconscious decisions to kill, such as armed robbers who try to eliminatewitnesses.Rolling was found competent to stand trial, but Taylor said he doubts hisclient was sane while killing.

In The WoodsThree days before police discovered Rolling's first crime scene, the careerrobber set up camp in a wooded area near campus. At night, he wanderedaround nearby apartments, peering in windows, looking for the perfectvictims.Petite, brown-haired women were the ones he wanted most, ones who resembledhis ex-wife.

His attacks were quick, repeated stabbings with a K-bar knife;three rapes; mutilation, including the decapitation of Hoyt. Each time, hemeticulously cleaned the scene, leaving few clues.Rolling stayed at his wooded hideout as the terror he created was revealed.He robbed a First Union Bank and broke into a student's apartment, where heate a bowl of oatmeal and swiped the keys to a Buick Regal.Tampa was his next stop.

Two days after stealing the Buick, he broke in toan apartment in West Tampa and a home off Busch Boulevard, taking cameras,watches and making long-distance calls to his mom in Shreveport, La.After he robbed a Save N' Pack grocery at Fowler and Nebraska avenues,Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies fired 19 bullets at Rolling as heescaped. He stole another car before heading to Ocala, where he was capturedafter robbing a Winn-Dixie.

The career robber was behind bars just 12 days after the first bodies werefound. The Ocala police had no idea Rolling was the man who had terrorizednearby Gainesville.The SearchThe search for the serial killer was cumbersome.

Fear lingered overGainesville as students and the city slowly returned to their routines.For two years, a task force of 150 investigators from local, state andnational agencies followed more than 4,400 leads.Florida newspapers provided nearly daily updates on information leaked aboutsuspects, including tips tied to student Edward Humphrey, who was nevercharged in the case.Five months went by before anyone realized the bumbling robber and car thiefsitting in a Marion County jail might be the madman responsible for thekilling spree.

After a tip that Rolling was a suspect in three slayings inhis hometown of Shreveport, the task force in January 1991 placed a note inRolling's jail file: "Notify us if he's ever released."Rolling marked his convictions for the Tampa and Ocala crimes creatively. Hecrooned self-penned country tunes and issued rambling statements tocourtroom audiences. Judges in those cases sentenced him to life in stateprison.

Rolling was in prison by November 1991, when a Gainesville grand juryindicted him in the murders. The relief felt throughout Gainesville camewith a price, as the community was forced to relive gruesome details formore than two years before jury selection began in State of Florida v. DannyHarold Rolling.

"I look at it as being the beginning of the end, of sorts," Powell's uncle,Jim Cullinane, said at the time. "It's something that will never end for theparents."Murders As PaybackDetails about Rolling's crime spree trickled out, making front-page newsthroughout the state.

Across Florida, people learned how this onetime churchbus driver murdered the five young victims, how he provocatively posed thewomen's bodies.Former prosecutor Smith said recently that the Gainesville murders were theone time Rolling controlled his life.Rolling, who says his father, a police officer, physically abused him as achild, attributes his crimes to an evil alter-ego named Gemini.

He saw the crimes as his chance to star in and direct three vignettes ofhorror, Smith said. He said the eight slayings - five in Gainesville andthree in Shreveport - were payback for eight hideous years he spent inprisons in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi for robbery. Rolling has said hecommitted the Shreveport slayings but has never been tried."Danny did it because it was the only thing he was good at, the only thingthat didn't make him ordinary," Smith said.

Rolling confessed details about the student murders to fellow inmates - newsthat leaked a year before the trial. The fear that once transfixed thecommunity evolved into a collective sadness and a recognition of innocencelost.No one expected Rolling's guilty plea on the first day of jury selectionFeb. 15, 1994."Your honor, I have been running from first one thing and then another allmy life," said Rolling, then 39. "Whether from problems at home or with thelaw or from myself.

But there are some things that you just can't run from,and this being one of those."Two months after Rolling's statement and a unanimous jury recommendation,Circuit Judge Stan Morris told a packed courtroom that Rolling would die inthe electric chair, the state's method of execution at the time. Rolling'sdefense of moderate mental illness triggered by his dysfunctional childhoodwasn't enough. He became No. 338 on Florida's death row.

The victims' families, some of whom were escorted out of the courtroombecause of their emotional outbursts, said afterward that they wantedRolling to understand the terror he had inflicted.

"We're not barbarians, but I want him to fear for his life," said LaurieLahey, Paules' sister. "I want him to sit there and think, 'Oh my God. I'mgoing to die,' just like the kids did."A Quiet Few Years

Since 1994, Rolling's time behind bars has been unremarkable. Other than amention in a few obscure books and cable documentaries, the Gainesvillestudent murders have faded from attention.That was the intention of prosecutors and the victims' families, whopersuaded Florida courts to prevent Rolling from making money from books orother items related to the killings.

Those precedent-setting laws stillstand.Rolling's notoriety isn't even among the upper echelon of serial killers,said Steve Egger, a criminology professor at the University of Houston. Hispersona pales in comparison with more charismatic killers, such as TedBundy, who killed at least 25 women - including several Florida StateUniversity coeds - during a four-year spree in the 1970s.

The Rolling case's most compelling issues in the past decade have beenconstitutional. The traditional series of appeals to overturn Rolling'sdeath sentence were exhausted a year ago, and Gov. Jeb Bush in September setan execution date.Death warrant appeals will continue until his execution.

Rolling's attorneys are hoping to prove that lethal injection is cruel andunusual. Their arguments have been shot down by the trial court and areexpected to be heard by the Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday.Rolling's lead attorney, Baya Harrison III, said he doesn't hold much hopefor a reprieve.

Rolling, Harrison said, is realistic about his slim chances."When a guy pleads guilty," Harrison said, "it just takes the heart out ofany post-conviction appeal."If Florida's high court rejects the argument,

Harrison plans to appeal tofederal court.

Walsh-Childers, who taught her first UF classes the week the Gainesvillestudents died, hopes no one forgets the suffering of the five victims andthe loss still felt by those who remember the terror of 1990."I hope we don't ever get so jaded that the deaths of five young people inone week doesn't fill us with horror," she said.

Reporter Thomas W. Krause and researcher Michael Messano contributed to thisreport.---

Source : Tampa Tribune (Reporter Mary Shedden can be reached at (813)259-7365 or

mshedden@tampatrib.com.)http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBUDHFZATE.html

Rolling appeals as death date looms

2006-10-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

Rolling appeals as death date loomsBy DOMINICK TAOAlligator Writer
Related Articles
Rolling attempts to delay lethal injection
If Florida's highest court rejects Danny Rolling's latest appeal to halt his execution, the convicted killer may still have other options to stay alive.
"It's always possible for him to seek another temporary stay of execution," said Spencer Mann, an investigator with the state attorney's office in Gainesville.
Rolling's attorney, Baya Harrison III, filed a notice of appeal Monday and can submit supporting facts to the state Supreme Court until 3 p.m. today. Time for arguments before the court regarding Rolling's appeal has been reserved for Wednesday.
Mann, who was the spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriff's Office during the 1990 murder investigation, said he expects the Florida Supreme Court to deny Rolling's motion to overturn the death sentence.
"He's not challenging his guilt," Mann said. "It's a situation where he just doesn't want to die."
If Rolling's lawyer cannot convince the Florida Supreme Court to delay his client's scheduled Oct. 25 lethal injection, Mann said it is possible for Rolling to take his case as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.
If he did, it would be Rolling's second time requesting that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn a Florida Supreme Court's decision. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal of the death sentence.
Mann said Harrison's appeal strategy is very predictable.
That strategy, Mann said, consists of an indefinite series of appeals that has been "taking way too long."
Rolling has been on death row since 1994. His trial, earlier that year, came four years after he murdered five UF and SFCC students.

Rolling attempts to delay lethal injection

2006-10-12T14:36:00.000-07:00

Rolling attempts to delay lethal injectionBy JESSICA RIFFELAlligator Staff Writer
Related Articles
Rolling appeals as death date looms
After Gov. Jeb Bush signed his death warrant last month, confessed serial killer Danny Rolling has filed a last-ditch attempt to overthrow his death sentence.
His attorney, Baya Harrison, filed an appeal of the death penalty sentence with the Florida Supreme Court on Monday, just meeting this week's deadline.
He had filed a motion to overturn Rolling's death sentence on Oct. 4 with the District 8 Circuit Court, but Circuit Judge Stan R. Morris denied it on Monday.
Harrison filed an appeal of that decision the same day with the Florida Supreme Court, giving them the same motion to overturn the death sentence.
Rolling, who pleaded guilty in 1994 for the murders of five UF and SFCC students in 1990, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Oct. 25, according to a death warrant signed by Bush on Sept. 22.
The execution could be held off temporarily or permanently if there are any major issues leading officials to believe he should not be executed, said State Attorney's Office spokesman Spencer Mann.
He said a stay is possible, but "there don't seem to be any substantive issues that need to be resolved."
Rolling's motion to overturn the death sentence, which was set in 1994, cites four reasons that he should not be executed.
The response from Morris denied all four arguments, citing legal precedent for each.
The Florida Supreme Court can make its own decision to either deny the motion, refuse to look at it, or accept the motion and therefore hold off the execution.
According to the motion filed by Harrison, Rolling should not be executed because death by lethal injection is "cruel and unusual punishment," because it violates his First Amendment right to free speech, because he has not received public records he requested and because a recent report from the Florida Bar cites several problems with the state's current death penalty system.
According to Morris' response, the claim that lethal injection is cruel and unusual has been denied in several Florida death penalty cases, so it should not be invoked in this case.
The judge wrote that Rolling's claim that the execution violates his free speech assumes the injection will be administered incorrectly, leaving Rolling unable to communicate any pain. Morris refuted the argument because there is no evidence that the injection will be botched.
The Florida Bar report reason was denied because the report only makes recommendations, not law, for the system. He also wrote that it is "inapplicable" to this case.
The reply states that the public records Rolling is requesting will not be given to him because he had to have previously requested them.
Rolling is now asking for records from the Florida Medical Examiner's Office and the Department of Corrections to challenge the use of the chemicals used to carry out the execution, according to Morris' reply.
Florida statute states that records requests are "not intended to aid a defendant in delaying execution," Morris wrote.

Case Of Danny Rolling Going to Fl. Supreme Court

2006-10-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_285110933.html

Oct 12, 2006 11:07 am US/Eastern

Case Of Danny Rolling Going to Fl. Supreme Court

(CBS4/AP) GAINESVILLE

The Florida Supreme Court will hear the case of convicted serial killer Danny Rolling.

A judge ruled that Rolling's arguments about lethal injection are without merit.

Attorneys for Rolling had filed claims regarding the process of the death penalty in Florida.

They say they will continue fighting.

Arguments on the appeal are scheduled before the Florida Supreme Court on October 18th.

"We're sorry we lost, but Judge Morris is the kind of person who sticks to the law and as he sees it, we're just out of bullets," Harrison said Wednesday. "We're gonna keep fighting."

Gov. Jeb Bush signed a death warrant last month for Rolling, who pleaded guilty to the 1990 slayings of five Gainesville college students. One victim was decapitated and others were mutilated, posed and sexually assaulted.

Killed were Christa Hoyt, 18, of Gainesville; Sonja Larson, 18, from Deerfield Beach; Christa Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; Tracy Paules, 23, and Manny Taboada, 23, both of Miami. Rolling is to be executed Oct. 25.

Florida judge denies appeal for former Shreveporter Rolling

2006-10-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061012/BREAKINGNEWS/61012006

Florida judge denies appeal for former Shreveporter Rolling
October 12, 2006

From Staff and Wire ReportsA Florida judge refused to hear arguments about lethal injection from convicted serial killer Danny Rolling, a former Shreveporter and son of a retired local police lieutenant, and his denial of Rolling's appeal now puts the case before the Florida Supreme Court

Defense attorneys had filed claims involving public record access, cruel and unusual punishment, free speech and an American Bar Association report on the death penalty process in Florida, the Gainesville Sun reported for today’s edition.

Circuit Court Judge Stan Morris refused to grant a hearing for Rolling, 52, on Monday, saying his arguments about lethal injection were without merit.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed the death warrant Sept. 22 for Rolling, convicted of the 1990 slayings of five college students in Gainesville, Fla., and the chief suspect in a gruesome 1989 triple slaying here. Now, unless Florida's highest court intervenes,

Rolling will die by lethal injection Oct. 25.

He pleaded guilty in 1994 to the college-city slayings of Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; Christa Hoyt, 19, of Archer; and Tracy Paules, 23, and Manuel Taboada, 23, both of Miami.

Three of the five victims were mutilated. One woman was decapitated, her head placed on a bookshelf, her torso slit from neck to waist. Three of the four women were raped. Several of the bodies were posed for shock value. A knife was used in all of the killings.Rolling’s attorney Baya Harrison said he planned to appeal Morris’ decision.

Arguments on the appeal are scheduled before the Florida Supreme Court Wednesday."We’re sorry we lost, but Judge Morris is the kind of person who sticks to the law and as he sees it, we’re just out of bullets," Harrison said Wednesday.

"We’re gonna keep fighting."

Rolling, the son of a former Shreveport police lieutenant, was and remains the chief suspect in the 1989 slayings of 24-year-old college student Julie Grissom, her father, Tom, 55, and her 8-year-old nephew, Sean, in the elder Grissom’s Southern Hills Beth Lane home.

Rolling was never tried for the slayings, but an arrest warrant from the Caddo Parish District

Attorney’s office has remained prepared since the early 1990s, requiring only a judge’s signature."Nothing has changed," Shreveport police Lt. Danny Fogger told The Times in 2000.

"We’ve long had enough evidence to arrest him."But the state of Florida made it clear Rolling would never be extradited to a state where he might be convicted and sentenced to a jail term. That could set up a separate legal battle over whether he could be forcibly returned to a state where he faced death.

In an interview with Florida’s WFLA-TV in the mid-1990s, Rolling admitted responsibility for the Grissom murders, but stopped just shy of confessing. He also said he killed a person for each year he served in prison; the total of the Shreveport and Gainesville murders is eight.Rolling's connection with the Florida slayings was revealed through the work of Shreveport police detectives, who notified

Florida investigators that Rolling, arrested in Florida for an unrelated armed robbery, was the suspect in the Grissom slayings. That prompted a check of his DNA against that found at the college slayings. There was a match.

Spurned by area judge, Rolling to appeal to state high court

2006-10-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061012/LOCAL/210120352/1078/news

Spurned by area judge, Rolling to appeal to state high court

By LISE FISHER
Sun staff writer
October 12. 2006 6:01AM

Rolling will take appeal to state's high court after judge refuses itAn appeal over the death sentence of convicted serial killer Danny Rolling will be heading to the Florida Supreme Court after a local judge denied a request to hear arguments on the matter

On Monday, Circuit Judge Stan Morris refused to grant a hearing for Rolling, 52, over issues surrounding lethal injection, finding the claims without merit.

Morris' decision will be appealed, said Rolling's attorney Baya Harrison on Wednesday. Arguments on the appeal currently are scheduled before the Florida Supreme Court on Oct. 18.

Last month Gov. Jeb Bush signed a death warrant for Rolling. His execution has been scheduled for Oct. 25.Rolling pleaded guilty in 1994 to fatally stabbing five college students in their Gainesville homes at the start of the 1990 fall semester.

His victims were Christa Hoyt, 19, of Archer; Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Tracy Paules, 23, of Miami; Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; and Manuel Taboada, 23, of Miami.

Morris, the same judge who sentenced Rolling to death, denied defense attorney claims involving public record access, cruel and unusual punishment, free speech and an American Bar Association report on the death penalty process in Florida, the judge's court order stated.

Rolling had claimed he was denied public records, held by the Florida Medical Examiner's Office and the Department of Corrections, and needed to challenge the use of chemicals in lethal injections.

But Morris said Rolling had time to request the records before and couldn't "make a public records request to delay his execution."The judge also noted the Florida Supreme Court has determined lethal injection is not cruel and unusual punishment and that there was no evidence the chemicals used for the death sentence would be improperly administered.

One of the defense's four claims said Rolling would be denied his right to free speech if he was not properly anaesthetized and therefore couldn't communicate if he was experiencing pain.

Morris rejected a final claim that an American Bar Association report on the death penalty system in Florida is newly discovered evidence showing this is cruel and unusual punishment. The report is a compilation of previously gathered facts, inapplicable to this case or not within the scope of the court reviewing it, Morris wrote.

After Rolling's death warrant was signed, State Attorney Bill Cervone had said he did not believe there were additional "substantive issues" for the courts to consider in Rolling's case. However, he said, there likely would be last-minute attempts to delay an execution.If an appeal is denied by the Florida Supreme Court, the case would then be headed to the federal courts for final consideration.

Lise Fisher can be reached at (352) 374-5092 or fisherl@gvillesun.com.

Reject Vengeance in Death Penalty Vote

2006-10-12T07:21:00.000-07:00

Published on Tuesday, October 10, 2006

by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)

Reject Vengeance in Death Penalty Vote

by John Nichols

When dozens of Amish men and women showed up on Saturday for the funeral of the Pennsylvania man who had killed five of the religious community's children in a school shooting rampage, news reporters who were unfamiliar with the Christian values of the Amish were dumbfounded.

For the Amish, however, it was essential that they join in the mourning of a human being who, though horrific in his actions, was still, to their view, one of God's children.

In contemporary America, where the biblical requirement to forgive has been all but lost in a rush to lay blame and to punish, the Amish way is, for most non-Amish, so archaic as to be incomprehensible.

But it was not always so.

When Americans took more seriously the teachings of the Nazarene, and the logical policies that should follow from them, the wisest of our forefathers and mothers rejected the path of vengeance in favor of more enlightened approaches to issues of crime and punishment. Wisconsin was in the forefront of that remarkable journey.

Five years after statehood, Wisconsin became one of the first jurisdictions on the planet to completely ban the practice of state-sanctioned murder. The movement to bar capital punishment brought together Christians, Jews and freethinkers, of which the state had many, who argued on both moral and practical grounds for the abolition of the most unforgiving of all punishments. State Rep. C. Latham Sholes, the Kenosha Republican who led the fight for abolition, summed up the sentiments of the time when he said that to allow the state to execute even the vilest of criminals would be to "disgrace the mercy-expecting citizens of the state of Wisconsin."

Now, 153 years after Sholes convinced the Legislature and Gov. Leonard Farwell to implement the ban, Wisconsin has barred capital punishment for longer than any other state or nation.
Most of the rest of the world has caught up with Wisconsin. Only a handful of the planet's most backward nations permit executions. Unfortunately, in the United States, self-serving politicians have used lies and fear-mongering to maintain support for capital punishment and in recent years to spread this darkest expression of the human weakness for vengeance.

On Nov. 7, at the behest of such politicians, Wisconsin voters will be asked to offer their opinion on an advisory referendum that asks whether the death penalty should be enacted in the state of Wisconsin for cases involving individuals convicted of murder.

When I vote "no" on that referendum, I will recall my ancestors who helped to forge this state's ban on capital punishment more than 150 years ago, I will respect the teachings of the Nazarene who was the most famous victim of the death penalty, and I will honor the Pennsylvania Amish for reminding us that it is still possible to act upon those teachings even in a country that has been dragged so very far from its best values and highest ideals.

John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times.
His family has resided in Wisconsin since 1823. E-mail: jnichols@madison.com

Appeal denied for Gainesville serial killer

2006-10-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

WTSP Tampa Bay

Gainesville, Florida - A judge has refused to hear arguments about lethal injection from convicted killer Danny Rolling. The judge has also denied an appeal sending the case before the Florida Supreme Court next week.

Governor Jeb Bush signed a death warrant last month for Rolling who pleaded guilty to the 1990 slayings of five Gainesville college students. Rolling's execution is set for October 25th.

Rolling terrorized Gainesville in late August and early September 1990, killing four women and one man in their off-campus apartments. One victim was decapitated and others were mutilated and sexually assaulted.

Rolling appeals as death date looms

2006-10-12T01:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.alligator.org/pt2/061012rolling.php

Rolling appeals as death date looms

By DOMINICK TAO

Alligator Writer

Rolling attempts to delay lethal injection

If Florida's highest court rejects Danny Rolling's latest appeal to halt his execution, the convicted killer may still have other options to stay alive.

"It's always possible for him to seek another temporary stay of execution," said Spencer Mann, an investigator with the state attorney's office in Gainesville.

Rolling's attorney, Baya Harrison III, filed a notice of appeal Monday and can submit supporting facts to the state Supreme Court until 3 p.m. today. Time for arguments before the court regarding Rolling's appeal has been reserved for Wednesday.

Mann, who was the spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriff's Office during the 1990 murder investigation, said he expects the Florida Supreme Court to deny Rolling's motion to overturn the death sentence.

"He's not challenging his guilt," Mann said. "It's a situation where he just doesn't want to die."
If Rolling's lawyer cannot convince the Florida Supreme Court to delay his client's scheduled Oct. 25 lethal injection, Mann said it is possible for Rolling to take his case as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.

If he did, it would be Rolling's second time requesting that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn a Florida Supreme Court's decision. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal of the death sentence.

Mann said Harrison's appeal strategy is very predictable.

That strategy, Mann said, consists of an indefinite series of appeals that has been "taking way too long."

Rolling has been on death row since 1994. His trial, earlier that year, came four years after he murdered five UF and SFCC students.

Judge denies latest Rolling appeal

2006-10-12T01:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061011/BREAKINGNEWS/61011067

Danny Harold Rolling.

Danny Harold Rolling is shown in this Feb. 13, 1994 photo, during his trial in Tampa, Fla., during which he plead guilty to the serial murders of five young women at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed a death warrant Friday, Sept. 22, 2006, setting the execution date of Oct. 25, 2006, for Rolling, who pleaded guilty to the grisly 1990 slayings of five Gainesville college

Convicted Murderer Danny Rolling Denied Another Appeal

2006-10-12T01:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.wcjb.com/news.asp?id=14264

Convicted Murderer Danny Rolling Denied Another Appeal

10/11/2006 By: Siobhan Riley, WCJB Tv20 News

Convicted murderer Danny Rolling's execution date is set for Oct. 25, and he's running out of appeals.

Rolling killed five college students 16 years ago in Gainesville. In his most recent attempt to stop his execution, Rolling filed an appeal that was turned down Monday.

Eighth circuit court judge Stan Morris denied four separate objections. And last week he denied a public records request by Rolling for autopsy reports for prisoners who were executed by lethal injection

.
Legal experts say Rolling may be trying to prove that lethal injection is not an appropriate manner of execution. Experts also believe Rolling will attempt an appeal in the federal court system.

State Attorney Bill Cervone said the chances of winning another appeal are very difficult to project.
"For any court or state federal to grant Rolling relief on the claims he's made now, they would have to reverse course on previous rulings," Cervone said.

Legal experts say it's impossible to predict when the Florida Supreme Court might take some action. For now, Rolling's date for execution remains Oct. 25.

Former Gainesville Officer: Murders In 1990 Touched All

2006-10-12T01:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.news4jax.com/news/10055781/detail.html

Former Gainesville Officer: Murders In 1990 Touched All

POSTED: 7:23 pm EDT October 11, 2006
UPDATED: 7:53 pm EDT October 11, 2006

A former Gainesville officer who knows a great deal about a serial killer on death row for murdering five college students said the murder spree 16 years ago changed her life forever.
Channel 4's Dan Leveton talked with former Gainesville Police Public Information Officer Sadie Darnell who remembers the time of the murders vividly.

Danny Rolling is scheduled to die in late October for the murder of five University of Florida students. His victims ranged in age from 17 to 23, and one of them, Christi Powell, was from Jacksonville.

The case was one in the area could ever forget, especially those who worked for the Gainesville police department in 1990.

"The tension was palpable. It was something that was present every minute of the day," Darnell said.

She had only been on the job as the PIO for the Gainesville Police Department for a few months when murders began.

"When the situation of the series of murders reached its peak, it was complete panic in Gainesville. There was not one area that was untouched," Darnell said.

Danny Rolling was sentenced to death for the murders of five students in Gainesville.
Born and raised in Gainesville, the crimes also altered Darnell's life in August of 1990.
First, Sandra Larson and Christi Powell were found dead days before the Fall school semester began. The next day, Christa Hoyt, and a day later Tracy Paules and Manny Taboada became victims.

"For me it was when Tracy and Manny were found. That's when I thought, 'this is really something that is so unusual and different it must be they call the serial murder phenomenon and it's in our midst,'" Darnell said.

The tension remained in the community for months, until Rolling was connected to a similar murder in Louisiana and arrested in Marion County.
A DNA test confirmed he was the killer.

Darnell said her first thoughts when Rolling was arrested were of relief that there would be an end to the murder spree.

A memorial wall for the victims is located in Gainesville. Rolling said she kept the wall up for the first 10 years and said the memorial is extremely important.

"The murders, serial murder can happen anywhere, anytime and there's no sense of shame in a community when it happens. The sense of shame comes when a community does not pull together," Darnell said.

Darnell said she had been considering whether to attended Rolling's execution, but she decided not to go because she said he probably wants people there for the attention and she will not give it to him.

Previous Stories:
September 23, 2006: Governor Signs Gainesville Killer's Death Warrant

NCADP October Execution Alert

2006-10-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/10/10/18319421.php

NCADP October Execution Alert

by National Coalition to Abolish Death Penalty

Tuesday Oct 10th, 2006 11:38 AM

Seven inmates are scheduled to be executed in October. The first execution is scheduled for Oct. 18, with three final executions scheduled to occur on Oct. 25.

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
e - @ b o l i t i o n i s t
October 2006

Please forward and cross-post this message widely. If you received this message from a friend, subscribe free at http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/signUp.jsp?key=28

Seven Inmates scheduled for execution in October

Seven inmates are scheduled to be executed in October.

The first execution is scheduled for Oct. 18, with three final executions scheduled to occur on Oct. 25.

Those scheduled to be executed include one man whose trial depended upon testimony from an unreliable man and another who suffers from alcoholism and possible post traumatic stress disorder from his service in Vietnam.

Michael Johnson, who maintains his innocence, is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on Oct. 19.

Arthur Rutherford is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 18 by the state of Florida, despite the fact that his counsel failed to present his mental and psychological problems during his trial. Read more about these and the other cases below -- and ACT!

Do Not Execute Michael Johnson!
Michael Johnson maintains that his accomplice, David Vest, is responsible for the murder of Jeff Wetterman. Vest confessed to the crime, yet the prosecutor withheld this information from the defense counsel. The prosecutor then called Vest as a witness, who stated under oath that Johnson killed Wetterman. In return, Vest received a lighter prison sentence for his confession.

The state illegally withheld this confession, and also allowed Vest to commit perjury by making two different statements under oath. This demonstrates that death row inmates often do not receive effective counsel. One judge even acknowledged the “troubling record of the State’s inconsistent pretrial and trial strategy with respect to the two codefendents.” ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Rick Perry requesting that he stop the execution of Michael Johnson!

Read More and Take Action at:
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5277

Do Not Execute Arthur Rutherford!

Convicted of killing a woman for money, Rutherford’s counsel decided not to present evidence on his mental state to the jury. Rutherford suffers from what has been diagnosed as an anxiety disorder similar to post traumatic stress disorder. Also, he endured abuse during his childhood and is an alcoholic. While the defense had reason not to present this evidence during the trial, it should at least have come up during the sentencing phase as mitigating factors. His psychological state could have affected his judgment the day of the murder. Arthur Rutherford’s counsel failed him, and the state of Florida should not execute him.

ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Jeb Bush requesting that Arthur Rutherford’s execution be halted! Read More and Take Action at: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1741

See and act on all current Execution Alerts at http://www.ncadp.org/execution_alerts.html

October 18: Arthur Rutherford, FL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1741

October 19: Michael Johnson, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5277

October 24: Jeffrey Lundgren, OH http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5278

October 25: Gregory Summers, TX http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5306

October 25: Donnie Johnson, TN http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=224

October 25: Danny Rolling, FL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5279

October 26: Larry Hutcherson, AL http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5454

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Florida Bishops Plead for Stay to Executions

2006-10-12T01:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=96368

ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome

Date: 2006-10-11

Florida Bishops Plead for Stay to Executions

TALLAHASSEE, Florida, OCT. 11,

(Zenit.org).

- The bishops of Florida sent a letter to Governor Jeb Bush, asking him to stay two executions in the state.

Arthur Dennis Rutherford is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 18, and Danny Rolling on Oct. 25.

"We implore the governor to listen to the growing chorus of voices calling for a moratorium on executions in Florida and a careful examination of the state's death penalty system," the bishops stated in the letter released today.

The bishops acknowledged the crimes committed by the two inmates on death row, and the suffering they caused, but said that "we must resist the natural inclination to think that only by taking a murderer's life can justice be served."

"[T]he antidote to violence is not more violence" "we cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing those who have killed others," continued the statement, signed by 10 bishops representing all of the states' dioceses.

"Society must be protected from criminals," added the bishops, "but we need not go to the extent of executing them.

The cycle of violence must end."

Florida must reverse death penalty process

2006-10-12T00:53:00.000-07:00

Florida must revise death penalty process

By Mark R. Schlakman
MY VIEW
As the campaign season shifts into high gear, statewide officeholders, members of the Florida Legislature and candidates who are running for these posts must resist the temptation to engage in death-penalty demagoguery. However, this temptation may prove to be overwhelming for some given that two death warrants are pending; both are scheduled to be carried out later this month.

One death warrant has Danny Rolling's name on it. Rolling, as many may recall, is the infamous perpetrator of the brutal murders of five college students in Gainesville in 1990 who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death in 1994 for committing these heinous crimes.

The challenge for politicians and other key actors, especially given the media attention that notorious cases typically generate, is to separate their own personal support for or opposition to capital punishment and public outrage over such cases and recognize that Florida's death-penalty process is fraught with problems.

A report released recently by the American Bar Association's Florida Death Penalty Assessment Team documents many of the issues and problems that must be addressed to minimize the risk that the state might execute an innocent person. Clearly, guilt was not at issue in the Rolling case.

It is important to note that this report neither supports nor opposes the death penalty; nor does it call for a moratorium on executions. The ABA endeavored to ensure that the eight-member Florida team was diverse and balanced to reflect prosecutorial, defense, judicial and academic perspectives along with other related subject matter expertise.

The report's recommendations are intended to improve fairness and accuracy in our criminal-justice system. Moreover, if implemented properly, it follows that some of these recommendations might also have the practical effect of reducing the time that it takes many death-penalty cases to move through the criminal-justice system and the appeals process.

The alarming backdrop is that, since 1973, Florida has exonerated more death-sentenced inmates than any other state. Tragically, one inmate was exonerated after he died of cancer on Death Row. A related cause for concern is the troubling observation by Justice Raoul Cantero, who was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Gov. Jeb Bush, that some legal representation provided by private registry lawyers in capital-case proceedings was among the worst lawyering that he had ever seen.

Yet another cause for concern relates back to a 1991 finding by the Florida Supreme Court's Racial and Ethnic Bias Commission that a criminal defendant was much more likely to receive a death sentence when the victim was white than when the victim was African American. In 2000, while stopping short of acknowledging that such bias undermined the criminal-justice system, the Governor's Task Force on Capital Cases made various recommendations that called for further review; however, many of those recommendations were never implemented.

Beyond concerns regarding racial and ethnic bias, there is also cause for concern regarding socioeconomic and geographic bias, the latter attributable in part to the fact that uniform protocols have not yet been adopted that would provide guidance to Florida's 20 elected state attorneys when deciding whether to seek the death penalty in any given case.

Therefore, when prosecutors from different judicial circuits assess substantially similar criminal cases, it is conceivable that prosecutors from judicial circuit A might decide to seek the death penalty while prosecutors from judicial circuit B might opt for life without parole, heightening concerns over whether the death penalty is applied consistently throughout the state.

One of the report's recommendations embraces a recent Florida Supreme Court opinion that called upon the Legislature to revisit the state's death-penalty statute and require unanimity in capital-case penalty-phase proceedings. The court observed that Florida is the only remaining state of the 38 death-penalty states in America today "that allows a jury to decide that aggravators exist and to recommend a sentence of death by a mere majority vote."

Despite the court's strongly worded opinion, the 2006 Legislature was unresponsive to the court's call for action.

Interestingly, it was widely reported that Attorney General Charlie Crist opposed this change. However, Gov. Bush was quoted recently as saying that the measure is "definitely worth consideration" and cautioned legislators not to ignore the court.

Each of the three branches of our state government has major responsibilities and significant roles to play. Problems in one area can adversely affect what might otherwise be adequate procedures in another.

Florida residents expect a system of justice that engenders confidence based upon fairness and accuracy. It is in the best interests of every Floridian for the state to invest the necessary resources and to take long-overdue steps to ensure that the death penalty is administered fairly.

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061009/OPINION05/610090303/1006/OPINION

Florida Bishops: Death Penalty Not Justified When Society Can Be Kept Safe from the Aggressor

2006-10-11T17:53:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Contact: Michele Taylor
(850) 205-6820
mtaylor@flacathconf.org

Tallahassee – We, the Bishops of Florida, are saddened at the prospect of two executions scheduled for October--Arthur Dennis Rutherford on October 18; and Danny Rolling on October 25. We implore the Governor to listen to the growing chorus of voices calling for a moratorium on executions in Florida and a careful examination of the State’s death penalty system.

The brutal crimes for which these inmates are to be executed were horrifying and appalling. Our hearts ache for the victims and their families, and we have enormous sympathy for them. These were unjustifiable attacks on human life, and we unequivocally condemn and renounce these crimes in the strongest terms possible. We cannot fully appreciate the struggle and recurring pain for the families, and more must be done by our churches and communities to give them comfort and care in their grief. At the same time, we must resist the natural inclination to think that only by taking a murderer’s life can justice be served.

In this day of heightened moral awareness, with increasing concerns about execution of the innocent and growing doubts about the fairness and effectiveness of the death penalty, we plead with the State and our Governor to realize that the antidote to violence is not more violence and that we cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing those who have killed others. It is said that ”justice delayed is justice denied,” but Florida law providing for life imprisonment without parole allows for justice without the legitimized killing by the State which coarsens us all.

Society must be protected from criminals, but we need not go to the extent of executing them. The cycle of violence must end. "As I live, says the Lord God, I swear I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but rather that he may be converted and live." (Cf. Ezekiel 33:11)

We are a government of, for and by the people. Let those speak loudly who agree that these executions are not taking place in our names. We appeal to Governor Bush, please stay these executions.

Archbishop John C. Favalora Archdiocese of Miami
Bishop John J. Nevins Diocese of Venice
Bishop John H. Ricard, SSJ Diocese of Pensacola/Tallahassee
Bishop Robert N. Lynch Diocese of St. Petersburg
Bishop Victor Galeone Diocese of St. Augustine
Bishop Gerald M. Barbarito, JCL Diocese of Palm Beach
Bishop Thomas G. Wenski Diocese of Orlando
Coadjutor Bishop Frank J. Dewane Diocese of Venice
Auxiliary Bishop Felipe J. Estévez Archdiocese of Miami
Auxiliary Bishop John G. Noonan Archdiocese of Miami

# # #

The Florida Catholic Conference is an agency of the Catholic Bishops of Florida. It speaks for the Church in matters of public policy, serves as liaison to government and the legislature, and coordinates communications and activities between the Church and secular agencies. The Bishops of the seven (Arch)dioceses in Florida constitute its Board of Directors.

http://www.flacathconf.org/Issuesinfo/Pdf/TeachingonDeathPenalty.pdf

with love ...

2006-10-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

Address Danny Rolling

2006-10-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

The address from Danny to send a supportcard

Danny Rolling # 521178,
Florida State Prison.
7819 N.W 228th street,
Raiford/Florida 32026

The Catholic Review: Mother, Who Forgave Daughter's Murderer, Joins Speakers in Opposition to Death Penalty

2006-10-09T04:15:00.000-07:00

By George P. Matysek Jr. 10/6/2006

Catholic Online

EMMITSBURG, Md. (The Catholic Review) – When Shannon Schieber was 18 months old, she already knew the alphabet. By the time she was 3, she was reading better than most 6-year-olds.

With perfect grades in school, Shannon was the president of her high school and president of her freshmen class at Duke University, where she graduated in three years with a triple major in mathematics, economics and philosophy.

Vicki Schieber, Shannon’s proud mother, described her daughter as “a gift beyond anything you could possibly believe,” a young woman who lived her Catholic faith in every way.

That’s what made May 7, 1998, such a terrible day in the Schieber family.

It was on that day when Shannon was raped and murdered in her apartment near the end of her first year of graduate school on a full scholarship at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pa..

Despite Schieber’s overwhelming loss, the devout Catholic mother, who lives in the Archdiocese of Washington, said she has forgiven the man who took her daughter’s life. Not only that, she asked that he not be put to death for his crimes and that the death penalty itself be abolished.

Schieber was one of several death penalty opponents who spoke Sept. 30 at Mount St. Mary’s University here for a conference called “Witness and Action: Christian Responses to the Death Penalty in Maryland.” About 100 people attended the daylong event, which was designed to raise awareness within the religious community about the death penalty.

Schieber said she believes all life is sacred. When the state has the ability to protect other lives by applying life sentences without parole, it must do so, she said. “Throughout Shannon’s life, we taught her that we could not hate and have revenge,” said Schieber. “Taking another life is not going to honor her.”

Many conference speakers said there are inherent flaws in the way the death penalty is applied. Ray Krone, the 100th exonerated death row inmate, and Kirk Bloodsworth, a Maryland Eastern Shore native who was the first death-row inmate exonerated with DNA, told of the pain they endured as innocent men on death row.

Since 1973, more than 120 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence, according to a House of Representatives report.

“The death penalty cannot be applied in a situation where innocent people can die,” said Bloodsworth, who converted to Catholicism while serving on death row at Baltimore’s Supermax prison.

In heinous cases, there is pressure to find someone guilty, Bloodsworth said. That can lead to innocent people like him getting trapped in the system.

“If it can happen to an honorably discharged Marine like me with no criminal record, it can happen to anyone,” he said. Dale Recinella, a Catholic lay chaplain for Florida’s death row and solitary confinement, said there is a growing need for Christians to take action against capital punishment on moral grounds.

“We’re not talking in the abstract about a death-penalty system that works perfectly,” he said. “It’s a system that is fraught with imperfections.”

Conference speakers noted that Maryland State’s attorneys are 1.6 times more likely to ask for a death sentence for the murder of a white victim than for a black victim. Death is sought twice as often when the defendant is black and the victim is white than when both are black, according to Maryland Citizens Against State Executions. The system is unfairly applied on the basis of race and geography and must be scrapped, they said.

“We hope to broaden the abolition movement in Maryland,” said Dr. Trudy Conway, a philosophy professor at Mount St. Mary’s who served as moderator of the conference.

Conway said she hoped participants will return to their parishes and educate members of their faith community about the “injustice” of capital punishment.

FSC order - warrant schedule Danny Rolling

2006-10-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

http://jweb.flcourts.org/pls/docket/ds_docket?p_caseyear=1960&p_casenumber=83638

09/21/1998
ORDER-CIRCUIT COURT

APPOINTING COLLATERAL COUNSEL - FOR CAPITAL POSTCONVICTIONRELIEF (BAYA HARRISON, III)
12/30/1999
Fee Paid in Full

09/22/2006
DEATH WARRANT (JEB BUSH)

09/27/2006
ORDER-DEP WARRANT SCHEDULE

The Governor has signed a death warrant for the execution of Danny Harold Rolling. The execution is scheduled to take place at 6:00 p.m., October 25, 2006. We direct that further proceedings, if any, in this case be expedited. Matters pending in the trial court, if any, shall be acted on and orders disposing of those matters entered by October 9, 2006. A Notice of Appeal, if any, shall be filed by October 10, 2006. The parties shall file simultaneous briefs, if any, by 3:00 p.m., October 12, 2006. The record on appeal shall be filed by 3:00 p.m., October 12, 2006. We hereby reserve October 18, 2006, for oral argument, if necessary, to hear any proceedings that may come before this Court. Per this Court's Administrative Order In Re: Mandatory Submission of Electronic Copies of Documents AOSC04-84 dated September 13, 2004, counsel are directed to transmit a copy of all documents, including any attachments and appendices, in an electronic format as required by the provisions of that order.

Take High Ground on Death Penalty

2006-10-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Published - Saturday, October 07, 2006

By MATTHEW R. DUNNIGAN
Rome, Italy

While it is unfortunate that the United States has failed to negotiate with Iran regarding uranium enrichment, it is also unfortunate that the U.S. is on the same moral level as Iran regarding capital punishment. To ask and receive a moral good from another party requires that the asking party be on a higher moral level.

If the referendum to reinstate the death penalty should pass in the November elections, in whose authority will the governor then execute?

In America there is separation of church and state. In 1999 while in St. Louis, the late Pope John Paul II stated that “a sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.”

God never infringes upon our wills, and because of this, we are free. But for all of our actions, or inactions, we will have to give an account. If the governor executes in the name of the state, be very careful, because the governor will then be infringing upon God’s will. God is Lord of both life and death.

Furthermore the catechism of the Catholic Church states that if the guilty party can be incarcerated to protect society, the capital punishment of the offender is not justifiable.

Attention, Wisconsin, the cardinal who was president of the papal commission that wrote the catechism is now Pope Benedict XVI.

Badgers, teach your children, and teach them well. Teach them right from wrong, and may they choose right over wrong. But if they should fail, teach them that to err is human and to forgive is divine. Teach your children that two wrongs do not make a right. Teach your children to choose life over death, and that the violence of capital punishment only begets more violence.

Society will never learn to respect human life when the state hypocritically kills those who have killed.

God protect all the children from this wicked, presumptuous, self-righteous and perverse generation that thinks it will be doing right when in reality it will be doing wrong by executing.

The Coed Murderer: Florida v. Rolling

2006-10-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Updated Dec. 12, 2005, 12:56 a.m. ET

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — He was born the son of a police officer, but caused carnage that would send a small college town into a frenzy.

When five coeds from three area schools were discovered brutally murdered in four days, Gainesville students went from routine class schedules to toting baseball bats around campus and sleeping twenty to a dorm room.

The hysteria came to an end when Danny Harold Rolling admitted brutally killing five students, raping three of them.

But while Rolling confessed to being the "Coed Killer," a jury was left to decide whether he would face the death penalty or life in prison.

The Coed Murders

Christina Powell, 17, was majoring in architecture at the University of Florida so that she could one day design housing for the poor. She and a roommate, 18-year-old Sonja Larson of Deerfield Beach, lived in an off-campus apartment.

On Aug. 26, 1990, Powell's parents grew concerned when they hadn't heard from their daughter in three days. Unable to reach either girl at the apartment, they drove from their home in Jacksonville only to discover their daughter's mutilated body. She had been stabbed five times in the back.

Upstairs, Larson, an aspiring teacher and award-winning artist, lay naked and covered in blood. She, too, had been stabbed to death.

Rolling broke into the house, first killing Larson as Powell slept on a couch on the first-floor. He then hunted Powell, but unlike Larson, raped Powell before murdering her.

Rolling moved onto Santa Fe Community College, waiting for his next victim inside her apartment. Before Christa Hoyt, 18, returned home, Rolling moved a large bookcase into her bedroom.

When she got home, he caught her in a chokehold, taped her hands and mouth, and raped her. He decapitated her and gutted the rest of her body. A deputy from the local sheriff's office found Hoyt's head placed on a shelf in the bookcase.

Hoyt had worked in the sheriff's office as a records clerk and the deputy was dispatched to her apartment when she failed to show up for work. The grisly discovery was made a day after Powell and Larson's bodies were found.

Two days later, two more students turned up dead — only this time, one victim was male. Manuel Taboada, a 23-year-old former high school football star enrolled at Santa Fe Junior College, was sleeping when Rolling crept into his bedroom. As Rolling attacked Toboada with a knife, a struggle ensued between the two men, alerting Toboada's roommate, Tracy Paules. Paules, also 23, confronted Rolling in an effort to save her friend, but ultimately both coeds lost the battle against the killer. Toboada died trying to fend off Rolling, who then raped and murdered Paules.

Within four days, Gainesville was transformed from a college town into a ghost town. Many students left campus and never returned. Business fell off by more than half. Women slept 20 to a dorm room. Students lined up at dormitory pay phones armed with baseball bats and kitchen knives.

Zeroing in on a Killer

In Florida's most costly investigation, police had taken blood and hair samples or fingerprints from more than 1,000 men. They even had a suspect in custody when the focus of the probe turned to Rolling, a career criminal arrested for robbing a supermarket just weeks after the murders.

By the first week in September, Danny Rolling became the prime suspect in the crimes. Rolling soon confided in cellmates, offering them vivid details about the slayings and mutilations that only the real killer would know.

Rolling was indicted in November on five counts of murder and three counts each of rape and armed robbery. But by that time, he had already been serving several life sentences for armed robbery.

Even if Rolling, a career criminal, never committed the horrific murders, he would be serving a total of four life sentences plus 243.3 years behind bars for a slew of armed robbery convictions. With life in prison a certainty, Rolling confessed to the crimes.

"I've been running from first one problem and then another all my lifebut there are some things you just can't run from," Rolling told Judge Stan Morris as he pleaded guilty, "and this is one of those."

Rolling's attorneys contend that their client suffers from schizophrenia and shouldn't be put to death. His mother, Claudia, has claimed that Rolling was abused by his father as a boy. At one point, Rolling was wanted in his native Louisiana for the attempted murder of his father. Rolling has a record stretching across four states for armed robberies dating back to the late 1970s. His criminal career was peppered by numerous escapes from prison, but he was always promptly recaptured.

Blood Money

The Rolling case popped up in court again in 1997, when the killer and his fianc Sondra London, were sued by the state for proceeds made from the sale of the killer's story to the media.

The state charged that couple was in violation of the Florida Civil Restitution Lien and Crime Victim's Remedy Act of 1997, better known as the "Son of Sam" law which states that a person cannot profit from his or her crimes.

During the penalty phase of the murder trial, London had covered the case for The National Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid, and later sold a series to The Globe. The couple were also advanced money for a book they were to co-write, The Making of a Serial Killer.

The state alleged that London's personal relationship with Rolling bars claims of being "objective reporter," which would otherwise have entitled her to the money.

London maintained that her personal relationship was irrelevant, and asked the court to find the statute unconstitutional as a violation of free speech.

In 1999, the Circuit Court ordered London to give $15,000 to the victims' families, though the students' relatives have scoffed at accepting the award, one victim's mother calling it "blood money."

The Verdict

On March 24, 1994, a jury of nine women and three men recommended a death sentence for each of the five murder counts. Though the ruling was a unanimous vote, only a seven-vote majority was required to vote for the death penalty.

One month later, Judge Stan Morris accepted the jury's recommendation and sentenced Rolling to death.

Danny Rolling

2006-10-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/editorial/sfl-editgsrollingoct01,0,1173276.story?coll=sfla-news-editorial

Danny Rolling

South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board
Posted October 1 2006

ISSUE: Danny Rolling's death warrant signed -- finally.Perhaps a better political talking point would be why is Danny Rolling still alive, 16 years after one of the most horrific crimes in Florida history, and 12 years after he was sentenced to death.

There is no doubt Rolling butchered five college students in Gainesville in 1990. He long ago admitted it. He plead guilty to the murders, and five death sentences were handed down in 1994. He should have been put to death long ago.

And yet, so long after the crime was committed -- Bob Martinez was governor of Florida when this happened -- politicians may be discussing not the length of time Danny Rolling has been awaiting execution, but the timing of the signing of his death warrant.

Gov. Jeb Bush last week signed Rolling's first death warrant, with the execution set for Oct. 25. And now there is rumbling among some Democrats that the timing of this, so close to the November election, could be an effort to show the Republicans -- in particular, gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist -- are tough on crime.Bush says the elections weren't a consideration in the timing.

You want to believe him. And you want to believe that politicians from both sides will not be cynical enough to turn the timing of when the warrant was signed into an election issue.If they want to raise issues about the lengthy appeals process in an open-and-shut case or the way the death penalty is administered or the chemicals that are used in lethal injections, fine.

Those are issues of concern, and should get the attention of lawmakers and courts.But no candidate or party should bother voters with any insulting wrangling over the timing of when Rolling's death warrant was signed.

You want to believe it won't stoop to that level of discourse. But then you remember, there is an election coming up soon.

BOTTOM LINE: Candidates must not turn this into a political football.

Docket - Danny Rolling

2006-09-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

http://jweb.flcourts.org/pls/docket/ds_docket?p_caseyear=1960&p_casenumber=83638

Case Docket
Case Number: SC60-83638 - Closed
DANNY HAROLD ROLLING vs. STATE OF FLORIDA
09/21/1998
ORDER-CIRCUIT COURT

APPOINTING COLLATERAL COUNSEL - FOR CAPITAL POSTCONVICTIONRELIEF (BAYA HARRISON, III)
12/30/1999
Fee Paid in Full

09/22/2006
DEATH WARRANT (JEB BUSH)

09/27/2006
ORDER-DEP WARRANT SCHEDULE

The Governor has signed a death warrant for the execution of Danny Harold Rolling.

The execution is scheduled to take place at 6:00 p.m., October 25, 2006.

We direct that further proceedings, if any, in this case be expedited.

Matters pending in the trial court, if any, shall be acted on and orders disposing of those matters entered by October 9, 2006.

A Notice of Appeal, if any, shall be filed by October 10, 2006.

The parties shall file simultaneous briefs, if any, by 3:00 p.m., October 12, 2006.

The record on appeal shall be filed by 3:00 p.m., October 12, 2006.

We hereby reserve October 18, 2006, for oral argument, if necessary, to hear any proceedings that may come before this Court.

Per this Court's Administrative Order In Re: Mandatory Submission of Electronic Copies of Documents AOSC04-84 dated September 13, 2004, counsel are directed to transmit a copy of all documents, including any attachments and appendices, in an electronic format as required by the provisions of that order.

Florida Supreme Court Scheduling Order - Danny Rolling

2006-09-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

Filed_09-27-2006_SchedulingOrder.pdf

Supreme Court of Florida

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2006

CASE NO.: SC83638
Lower Tribunal No.: 91-3832-CF-A
DANNY HAROLD ROLLING vs. STATE OF FLORIDA
__________________________________________________________________
Appellant(s) Appellee(s)

The Governor has signed a death warrant for the execution of Danny Harold
Rolling. The execution is scheduled to take place at 6:00 p.m., October 25, 2006. We
direct that further proceedings, if any, in this case be expedited.

Matters pending in the trial court, if any, shall be acted on and orders disposing
of those matters entered by October 9, 2006. A Notice of Appeal, if any, shall be
filed by October 10, 2006.

The parties shall file simultaneous briefs, if any, by 3:00 p.m., October 12,
2006. The record on appeal shall be filed by 3:00 p.m., October 12, 2006. We
hereby reserve October 18, 2006, for oral argument, if necessary, to hear any
proceedings that may come before this Court.

Per this Court's Administrative Order In Re: Mandatory Submission of
Electronic Copies of Documents AOSC04-84 dated September 13, 2004, counsel are
directed to transmit a copy of all documents, including any attachments and
appendices, in an electronic format as required by the provisions of that order.

A True Copy

Served:
BAYA HARRISON, III
COURT REPORTERS
CAROLYN M. SNURKOWSKI
WILLIAM P. CERVONE
HON. J. K. "BUDDY" IRBY, CLERK
HON. STAN R. MORRIS, JUDGE
HON. FREDERICK D. SMITH, CHIEF JUDGE

Supreme Court to hear Rolling's Appeal

2006-09-28T19:30:00.000-07:00

Article published Sep 27, 2006

Fla. Supreme Court to hear Rolling's appeal

By Bill Cotterell
Capitol Bureau

One week before he is scheduled to die for the murders of five Gainesville-area students, the Florida Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on any late appeals from Danny Rolling.

Gov. Jeb Bush has signed a death warrant setting Rolling's execution for 6 p.m. on Oct. 25.

The Supreme Court today ordered that any issues filed at the circuit court level be concluded by Oct. 9, with a notice of appeal -- if any -- filed with Florida's highest court on the following day. Attorneys will then have two days to file briefs and the justices reserved Oct. 18 for oral arguments.

Rolling was sentenced to die for the slayings of five students whose murders in 1990 spread fear through the university community.

A.D. Rutherford, a Milton native, is set to be executed the week before Rolling, on Oct. 18. He is sentenced to death for the beating and drowning death of Stella Salamon on Aug. 22, 1985.

Rutherford, who got a stay from a January execution date, has exhausted his state appeals. He still has appeals pending in federal court.

Closure and Discomfort - Danny Rolling

2006-09-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.alligator.org/edit/issues/00-summer/current/b01families24.htm

Closure and Discomfort

By Andrew Marra
Alligator Staff Writer

For a long time after the murders, Lisa Buyer could not take a shower without someone else in the house.

Tommy Carroll would weep when he read newspaper stories about the deaths of strangers. And the darkness in Ricky Paules' life lingered until the birth of her first grandchild.

Many who were close to the five murdered students do not see themselves as victims. The victims are those who fell under Danny Rolling's blade, they say. But they curse Rolling for robbing them of so much that was good. And they curse the fact that 10 years later he is still alive, breathing air that his victims never will.

In some ways the years have been kind to family and friends of the murdered Gainesville students. Where there were once tears and shock and what-ifs and more tears, there are now memorials and softball tournaments and grandchildren and a new sense of purpose. There are counseling sessions long since completed and a group of families closely united by common pain.
But there also are things that 10 years have not eclipsed.

Tommy Carroll will never forget the Tuesday morning he entered the apartment of his friends Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada - fearing the worst - and found Tracy's butchered body in the hallway.

Ann Garren will never forget the last night she spent with her daughter, Christa Hoyt - the night before Hoyt was killed. She had told Garren she was looking for a new place in a better neighborhood.

Lisa Buyer will never forget talking to Tracy Paules the night before her murder, warning her to be careful because there was a killer on the loose. By then two bodies had been found.
Mostly, though, friends and family members say they will not forget Daniel Harold Rolling.
"It bothers me on a daily basis that he is still alive," said Buyer, who had known Manuel and Tracy since high school.

"I don't care if they stick him, gas him or fry him as long as they kill him," said George Paules, Tracy's father.

Carroll swears he will be a witness to Rolling's execution. When Carroll testified at Rolling's sentencing hearing in 1994, Rolling stared at him the entire time he spoke. Carroll looked in his eyes and saw evil, but he would not look away. He could not let Rolling win. It was the least he could do for Manny and Tracy, his high school friends.

Ricky Paules, Tracy's mother, is sure Rolling will die, but at 63 she is worried that she may not be around to see it happen. His death would bring closure for her, and the symbolic end to a long fight. The first few years after the murders were a battle with Rolling across the plains of her mind - a battle she says she has finally won.

"I'm not going to let him live in my head," she said. "I don't think about him every day."
The battle was made easier for Ricky and her husband, George, by the birth of Taylor Nicole Lahey, their first grandchild. Two years after Tracy's death, their granddaughter helped to ease the pain of her absence. Now, with six grandchildren, Ricky says time has softened the nights and the days.

The fight is not as easy for Garren, who says a day does not go by that she does not think of the man who killed her daughter. The murder was too gruesome, too violent.
"There is no closure," she said.

One thing the murders have done is make the victims' family and friends intense supporters of the death penalty. People who had never thought much about capital punishment before were quick to carry its flag. Many have become active proponents of streamlining the execution process and lowering the number of appeals a death row inmate can have. They know the legislative changes they push for would not affect Rolling. But they agree there will be other Danny Rollings.

Garren is angered that Rolling's appeals are pushing back his execution. How unfair, she says, that Rolling, who confessed his guilt, should be able to prolong his life.
"Our sentence is final," she said of her loss. "We don't get an appeal."

The victims are still remembered in little ways. Ricky Paules wears Tracy's birthstone ring. Tracy's brother, Scott, wears her class ring. Her sister, Laurie, has her jewelry. Taylor, the granddaughter, says a prayer every night for Aunt Tracy, who she never met.

When Buyer, who lives in Deerfield Beach, visits Gainesville she never leaves without passing the 34th Street Wall. Sometimes she will pull over. Or she will go to Gatorwood Apartments, where Tracy and Manuel were killed. Returning to Gainesville is easier now than it once was.
For Garren, the holidays are still terrible. Every year on Christa's birthday, she goes to her gravesite, writes notes on helium-filled balloons and lets them float away, imagining they are going to her daughter.

Such little reminders are footnotes to the larger things the murders have inspired. Garren, for example, goes to the state's prison for boys in Lancaster to tell young criminals about her struggle with Christa's violent death. She puts a face to murder and hopes it will do some good.
"I want to do things that will make Christa proud," Garren said.

Tracy's family has started the Tracy Paules Memorial Fund, which is administered by the Dade Community Foundation. It contributes to organizations like the American Cancer Society and schools for the blind. Her friends conduct fund-raising softball tournaments.

The murders have brought the families together. They trade cards and letters. They ask one another for advice, sharing a common perspective on life that few can have. Gainesville police Capt. Sadie Darnell acts as a liaison and keeps them informed about issues concerning the 34th Street Wall. Sometimes they have conference calls.

Friday's memorial service at the Wall will be an emotional event for all of them. Garren said it will be bittersweet to reunite with people she cares about in such a context.
George and Ricky Paules see the memorial as another way of moving on - a celebration of their daughter's life, not her death.

"That makes it a good thing," Ricky said.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

2006-09-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 28, 2006

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Please print this and send to addresses below

Governor Jeb Bush
The Capitol
400 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee
Florida 32399

September 28th, 2006.

Dear Governor Bush,

As a citizen of this world, I can’t help but being concerned about the developments in the USA and particularly in the State of Florida regarding the Death Penalty.
I have been watching the case of Mr. Clarence E. Hill and his requests for details about the chemicals and procedures that were used during executions.
I was shocked when I heard that, even though the appeals he pursued were still in process, the US Supreme Court overruled the Court of Appeals and denied mr. Hill his right to appeal. Despite the fact that the same Court allowed him to pursue the appeals in the first place, in January of this year.

In my opinion the US Supreme Court has denied Mr. Hill his civil rights to appeal to the lethal injection process. Even though the issue is still not cleared and many other States are questioning the humanity of this method of execution. At this moment California is questioning these same methods in Court. Executions have been halted in Missouri, New Jersey and Delaware because of this issue. Moratoriums are in place, for several reasons in Illinois, South Dakota and New York.

I have been reading many reports about the Lethal Injections, from organisations which were either in favour or against the Death Penalty. Both sides came to the same conclusion: the Lethal Injection is a cruel and unusual punishment. There is evidence that prisoners have experienced excruciating pain during their execution. The sequence of drugs used and the method of administration were created with minimal expertise over 3 decades ago. Which were adopted unquestionably by state officials with no medical or scientific background. Prisoners in the US are executed by means that the American Veterinary Medical Association regards too cruel to use on dogs and cats. In the case of Mr. Stanley Tookie Williams, investigation has proven that Mr Williams has died a slow and painful death. All these facts raise questions under the 8th Amendment.

The Human Rights Law is predicated on recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all people, including even those who have committed terrible crimes. It prohibits torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. These rights are being denied when using the lethal injection. Therefore I urge you to ensure the execution methods that will be used to execute an inmate, will be pain and suffering free. I also urge you to halt executions until a panel of aneasthesiologists, pharmacologists, doctors, correction officials,
procecutors, defense attorneys and judges have determined whether or not the lethal injections as currently practiced are indeed the most humane form of execution.

Respectfully yours,

Addresses :

Governor Jeb Bush
The Capitol
400 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee
Florida 32399

President Bush,
The White House,
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW,
Washington, DC 20500

Mr. Larry Cox - Executive Director,
Amnesty International USA,
5 Penn Plaza, NY 10001
USA

Mr. Bob Gremillion - President
Sun Sentinel,
200 E. Las Olas Blvd, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
USA

A Little History - Danny Rolling

2006-09-28T01:40:00.000-07:00

Daniel Harold Rolling (born 26 May 1954),

known as the "Gainesville Ripper", is the convicted murderer and mutilator of five students in Gainesville, Florida, in August 1990.

He was also suspected of—but never tried on—a triple homicide on November 24, 1989, in Shreveport, Louisiana, and the attempted murder of his father in May 1990.

As a result of his murder convictions, Rolling is scheduled to die by lethal injection on October 25, 2006, at 6 p.m. EST.

Danny Rolling was born to James and Claudia Rolling. His father was abusive to both him and his mother, and later his brother, Kevin. Claudia Rolling made repeated attempts to leave her husband, but always returned. Rolling's father was a police officer.

After several incarcerations as a teen and young adult for a string of robberies in Georgia, Rolling had trouble trying to assimilate into society and hold down a steady job. Finally, after years of abuse, Rolling attempted to kill his father during an argument with the elder Rolling.

He later fled to the state of Florida where he began his burglary and robbery spree, which culminated in the murders of five people in Gainesville. His signature was to arrange the bodies in such a way as to highlight the carnage in the rooms — this even included setting up several mirrors.

Although law enforcement authorities initially had very few leads and the investigation dragged on for years, Rolling was eventually charged with several counts of murder, and Alachua County State Attorney Rod Smith oversaw the prosecution.

Rolling was convicted nearly four years after the murders occurred, and sentenced to the death penalty in each case.

A second man, Edward Humphrey of Indialantic, Florida, was considered an initial suspect in the Gainesville murders; authorities cleared him of all charges after Rolling's arrest.

Rolling aided the writing career of Sondra London, who met him in prison while working with Gerard John Schaefer and other serial killers.

Rolling and the Gainesville murders are the subject of the book Beyond Murder by John Philpin and John Donnelly. The murders have been suggested to have been the inspiration for the original screenplay for Scream, though the similarities may merely be circumstantial.

Rolling was the subject of an episode of "Body of Evidence: From the Case Files of Dayle Hinman", a Court TV show. During Rolling's trial, Court TV ran an interview with his mother from her home, during which someone shouting and complaining (presumably Rolling's father) off-camera can be heard.

Preparations Under Way For Rolling's Execution

2006-09-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

Preparations Under Way For Rolling's Execution

POSTED: 6:40 pm EDT September 26, 2006

UPDATED: 9:39 am EDT September 27, 2006

RAIFORD, Fla. -- The man convicted of the 1990 murders of five college students in Florida is scheduled to be executed in a month.

Danny Rolling is scheduled to be executed Oct. 25 for the murders of five college students in 1990. Officials are already juggling media requests and plans for additional security at Florida State Prison.

In the summer of 1990, carefree college life turned to fear and hysteria in Gainesville. Five students were stabbed, killed and mutilated. Three of them were from South Florida.

The victims attended the University of Florida or nearby Santa Fe Community College. The focus on the execution of the man convicted of their killings is expected to rival that of Ted Bundy, who was put to death in 1989.

Rolling, a drifter, ended up in jail on an unrelated crime and was eventually tied to the murders and convicted.

On Oct. 25, he is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison.

Media and public interest is intense.

The Florida Association of Broadcasters is responsible for picking five TV and radio journalists to witness Rolling's execution. There is no lack of volunteers.

"This one has gotten interest from all over the state as well as networks outside the state because, I think, of how horrendous the crimes were, and it affected the whole state," said Pat Roberts of the Florida Association of Broadcasters.

Five newspaper reporters and two wire service reporters will serve as witnesses.

The prison warden in Starke will pick another 12 witnesses, typically including victims' relatives and lawmen who worked the Rolling case.

George Paules, the father of victim Tracey Paules, told the Associated Press, "We don't much care if they burn him, stick him or hang him, as long as they kill him.

"The friend of another victim called Rolling "an animal."Rolling has so far refused requests to talk about his crimes or his pending execution, which will draw many hundreds to Florida State Prison in a month.

Rolling may figure into election

2006-09-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Rolling may figure into election

Execution set for two weeks before the Nov. 7 balloting

By Mark Hollis Tallahassee Bureau

Posted September 26 2006

TALLAHASSEE · Will the fate of serial killer Danny Harold Rolling, who is set to die shortly before the Nov. 7 election, play a role in Florida's political campaigns?

Gov. Jeb Bush signed on Friday the death warrant for Rolling, who pleaded guilty in 1994 to the 1990 slayings of five college students in Gainesville.

Killed were Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; Christa Hoyt, 18, of Archer; Tracy Inez Paules, 23, of Miami; and Manuel R. Taboada, 23, of Miami.Bush set the execution for Oct. 25.

The execution of one of the most infamous killers on Florida's Death Row likely will draw national attention just as the campaign enters it most intense final stretch.

Some Democratic Party candidates said Monday they are wondering if the Republican governor's timing for the execution is meant to give a public relations boost to Republican candidates statewide, including Attorney General Charlie Crist, who is emphasizing crime and punishment issues in his campaign for governor.

"The timing is really suspect," state Sen. Walter "Skip" Campbell, a Broward County Democrat running for attorney general, said of the Republicans. "It's like they are trying to show everybody that they're tough on crime.

This [warrant] could have been signed a long time ago and the date set for another time when politics wouldn't be a consideration."

Bush said Monday he could have set the execution date for after the election, but insisted statewide elections weren't a consideration.

He said Rolling's case had already gone before the U.S. Supreme Court, which recently finished deliberations on other capital cases.

"I have a duty to sign these warrants when the timing is right," Bush said.

The governor also said it is unlikely Crist or Bill McCollum, the Republican running for attorney general, will make a lot of noise about the Rolling execution, given that their Democratic opponents also support the death penalty.

"I don't anticipate this being political, or one candidate benefiting from it," Bush told reporters. "I could have [signed the death warrant] for a week after the election, it doesn't change anything.

"Questions about the timing of the execution should be expected, said Mark Bubriski, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party."When something like this happens that close to an election, I think we're always going to raise the question of how is politics involved," he said.

Crist plays an official role in carrying out the death penalty.As attorney general, his office represents the state in death penalty appeals and he reports to the governor when those cases are ready for death warrants.

Aides to Crist and Democratic candidate Jim Davis aren't yet saying how they will deal with the Rolling execution."I can assure you, I can tell you now, it is not something we're going to play politics with," said Josh Earnest, Davis' campaign spokesman.

"This is one of the most important responsibilities that a governor has. And it's more important than politics.

"But Erin Isaac, a spokesman for Crist, was less definitive.

In a written reply to questions about the matter, she said: "As attorney general, [Crist] plays a role in handing down the punishment and will fulfill his obligation as he always does.

"Bush did not address whether he would have set a different date for the execution had state Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua beaten Davis to become the Democratic nominee for governor. Smith was the prosecutor in the Rolling case.

Bubriski, the Democratic Party spokesman, said if Crist or other Republicans attempted to exploit the Rolling case, "Rod Smith would come out swinging. Rod Smith would, no doubt, join Jim Davis' defense if they tried to do that."

Rolling's Death Warrant Stirs Controversy

2006-09-25T23:30:00.001-07:00

Rolling's Death Warrant Stirs Controversy
Monday, September 25, 2006
Danny Rolling's death warrant has been signed. Gainesville's convicted serial killer is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Oct. 25th. This leaves Rollings' defense team with an option that according to University of Florida Law Professor will be a tough case. The defense team will have to prove the method as unconstitutional to win the case and have it banned in a state. Professor Baldwin agrees that lethal injection should not be used to put a person to death. Rollings is currently housed at Union Correctional Institution near Raiford.

families look forward to closure

2006-09-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

Rolling death warrant stirs hope, memoriesFAMILIES LOOK TO EXECUTION FOR CLOSURE, WHILE MANY STUDENTS ARE UNAWARE.By DOMINICK E. TAOAlligator Writer
Danny Rolling, the serial killer who murdered five college students and ignited a frenzy of panic in Gainesville 16 years ago, will be put to death in October, according to a death warrant signed by Gov. Jeb Bush on Friday.
Rolling, 52, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Oct. 25 at 6 p.m. His last appeal was denied in June, and the governor refused him clemency.
For Ricky Paules, the wait up to Rolling's execution day is just "one of many roads" she has faced since he killed her daughter, Tracy Paules, 23, of Palm Springs.
"This road is next to the last one," Paules said.
The first began at the start of Fall semester, 1990, when Rolling killed five UF and SFCC students in their apartments. He either invaded their residences or hid inside, waiting for them. Four of his victims were dark-haired young women; the other was one of their male roommates.
To kill, Rolling used a knife. Before stabbing three of his victims to death, he raped them. Rolling decapitated one of his victims, posing her head near the apartment's front door for friends or police to discover.
Rollings' other victims were Christa Hoyt, 19, of Archer; Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; and Manuel Taboada, 23, of Miami.
Gainesville Police Sgt. Ray Barber - a 35-year-old patrolman in 1990 - was the officer who discovered Rolling's first victims at the Williamsburg Village Apartments on Aug. 26.
"There were two girls dead in the apartment," he said in an interview Saturday. "It was hard and dirty."
As more bodies were discovered in the next two days, Barber said fear engulfed the city.
"People would open their doors with baseball bats and guns," said Lt. Ed Posey, who was a plainclothes officer at the time of the murders. "Some guys said when they got off duty, they would search their houses. We had very little to go on."
As the panic began to diminish, Rolling was arrested for robbing a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Ocala on Sept. 8. It wasn't until months later that DNA evidence from bodily fluids left behind at the crime scenes identified him as the killer.
In 1994, Rolling pleaded guilty to the murders. He was sentenced to death. In the last 12 years, the name "Danny Rolling" has faded from the memory of many UF students.
"Now, people around here don't even think about him," Barber said. This is the fourth set of students since then."
For those who do remember, the thought of Rolling's execution means different things.
Posey said his closure came when he knew the right guy was behind bars. Paules is still waiting for the end.
At the idea of Rolling's execution is likely to be postponed, Paules only said, "Oh good Lord, don't tell me that."

Victims' families struggle with reminder of murders

2006-09-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.alligator.org/edit/issues/00-fall/000825/b04rolling25.htm

Victims' families struggle with reminder of murders

Alligator File PhotoState Attorney Rod Smith holds up a knife during court deliberation in the trial of Danny Rolling.

By Matthew Boedy Alligator Staff Writer

Eleven years is the average stay for an inmate on Death Row. For Daniel Harold Rolling - inmate No. 521178 at the Florida State Prison in Starke - the years have been a combination of attempts to prolong his life and create what some call a serial killer persona for his legacy.

When he is not in solitary confinement, he eats in his 6-by-9-foot cell at 5 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., and has supper at 4 p.m. He showers every other day.

The showers and the hour he spends outside in the prison yard each day may allow him to exhibit humanity. The $55 a day the state spends to keep Rolling alive is considered humane.
But there are some who say that police, when they arrested the Louisiana drifter for the brutal murders of five Gainesville college students, had no idea of the evil they had corralled.

John Philpin, a novelist who co-authored a book about the 1990 murders, said when he talked with Rolling on the phone, Rolling attempted to reveal some compassion.

"He made an effort to be very charming," Philpin said. "I very quickly realized everything with this man was a manipulation."

Philpin said, unlike other serial killers, Rolling has not been able to hold on to the image of the star stalker he would like. Rolling continues to write poetry that appears on his former fianc�e's Web site and even grants an interview every now and then. But his legacy among the most violent killers has been overshadowed by the lives he took.

Philpin said the persona Rolling has created out of his constant insinuation that he has multiple personalities just does not fit with the premeditated crimes he committed.

"There is no history-making going on here," Philpin said. "He works at making his own legend."
Those who knew the victims want to leave Rolling no more chances to speak; no more chances to have his name in the headlines.

And many family members of Rolling's victims say they are angered that Rolling is still alive six years after confessing to the five murders.

"He has had 10 years they didn't have," said Alison Monahan, who was Christina Powell's best friend. "Ten years is more than half of Christi's life."

Monahan, now a second-year law student at UF, said she understands the importance of the appeals process but argues that it could be streamlined to administer justice more quickly to future Death Row inmates.

In the meantime, Monahan said, seeing Rolling on television and in the newspapers is a painful reminder of her friend's murder. She sees Rolling as a methodical manipulator, pointing to his testimony this summer that he is "not a monster."
"That was totally designed for the six o'clock TV spot," she said.

State Attorney Rod Smith, who prosecuted Rolling, said justice sometimes moves slower than some would like.

"It's unconscionable that a murderer that has confessed to such a heinous crime and is sentenced to death still has appeals left," he said.

But his appeal process is not lengthy by Death Row standards, said Carolyn Snurkowski, head of criminal appeals for the Florida Attorney General's Office.

Rolling was sentenced to die in 1994 after confessing to the murders. The Florida Supreme Court upheld his sentence in March of 1997 and denied a second appeal three months later. In November of that year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal.

In July of this year, Rolling returned to a Gainesville courtroom, testifying that he did not receive a fair sentencing because of his lawyers' incompetence.

Circuit Judge Stan Morris is mulling over Rolling's challenge. If he denies the challenge, Rolling can appeal to the state Supreme Court. If that court refuses to entertain the appeal, he can take his case to federal court, starting a new round of appeals.
"This is a normal process available to all Death Row inmates,

" Snurkowski said.

Alligator staff writer Andrew Marra contributed to this report.

The victims of Danny Rolling

2006-09-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/15586438.htm

Posted on Fri, Sep. 22, 2006

The victims of Danny Rolling

Associated Press

Five college students were slain in late August 1990 in Gainesville by Danny Harold Rolling. The background of his victims:

Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach, was a second semester University of Florida freshman, studying science and pre-engineering. She graduated from Pompano Beach's Ely High School in 1989. She was a member of Students Against Drunk Driving and a manager for the girl's varsity basketball team. Her body was found in her upstairs bedroom at Williamsburg Village Apartments on Aug. 26, 1990.

Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville, was a second semester UF freshman after attending summer school. She planned to study architecture. She graduated from Episcopal High School in 1990 and was editor of the high school yearbook and worked on the school's literary magazine. She also participated in a church youth group. Her mutilated body was found downstairs in the apartment she shared with Ms. Larson on Aug. 26, 1990. She had been raped.

Christa Hoyt, 18, of Archer. Hoyt was a chemistry honors student at Santa Fe Community College and planned to attend UF. She worked as a records clerk at the Alachua County Sheriff's Office and was a police explorer. Ms. Hoyt, whose nickname was "Glowworm," graduated from Newberry High School in 1989 and was a member of the band. Her decapitated body was discovered Aug. 27, 1990 in a duplex where she lived alone. She had been raped.

Manuel R. Taboada, 23, of Carol City. Attended Metro-Dade Community College and Santa Fe Community College. He graduated from American High School in 1984 and was president of the Thespians club and played high school football. His body was found in his bed at Gatorwood Apartments. Authorities believe Taboada was attacked as he slept.

Tracy Inez Paules, 23, of Miami, studied pre-law at UF. Paules was a member of the National Honor Society and 1984 homecoming queen at Miami's American High School, where she played soccer and softball. Her body was found in the Gatorwood Apartments unit she shared with Taboada. She had been sexually assaulted.

Gov. Bush signs Rolling death warrant

2006-09-24T06:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060923/LOCAL/209230317/1078/news

Gov. Bush signs Rolling death warrant

By LISE FISHER, DEBORAH BALL
AND NATHAN CRABB
Sun staff writers

September 23. 2006 6:01AM

Gov. Jeb Bush signed a death warrant Friday for convicted slayer Danny Rolling, whose 1990 killing spree of five college students terrorized the Gainesville area.

The 52-year-old Rolling pleaded guilty in 1994 to fatally stabbing the students in their homes at the start of the 1990 fall semester. The deaths sent the area into a panic with many students rushing home from the college town. Those who stayed traveled together on city streets while others fortified their homes with extra locks and alarms as officers and news media descended on the area to find the killer.

Rumblings that Bush intended to sign Rolling's death warrant had been circulating through Tallahassee on Friday.

State Attorney Bill Cervone confirmed Friday afternoon that the Attorney General's Office had contacted him to report that the warrant was official.

Rolling's execution is scheduled for Oct. 25.

Cervone said that after years of appeals repeatedly turned down by state and federal courts, Rolling's case needed to move forward.

"For somebody who did these horrible things and admitted it so many years ago, it's time," Cervone said.

Rolling was convicted of five murders, three counts of sexual battery and three counts of armed burglary of a dwelling with battery. He broke into the students' homes, surprising them as they either slept or arrived home. The five were stabbed to death, and some of the bodies were mutilated or posed.

Rolling's victims were Christa Hoyt, 19, of Archer; Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Tracy Paules, 23, of Miami; Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; and Manuel Taboada, 23, of Miami.

Ricky Paules, Tracy Paules' mother, said she was "thrilled" by the signing of the warrant.

"I knew justice would be done," said Paules of St. Augustine. "I've been waiting to do this for 16 years. I hate to sound coarse about it, but that's the way I feel.

"When Rolling entered his guilty plea instead of going to trial, some had speculated his execution date wouldn't be postponed by lengthy appeals. But it has been 12 years since Circuit Judge Stan Morris imposed five death sentences on Rolling.

State Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua, a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate, was the prosecutor on the Rolling case. He said he never thought the appeals process in the Rolling case would last this long. After all, he said, Rolling confessed to the murder, there was DNA evidence and he tortured his victims.

"You understand why victims feel so frustrated by the justice system," Smith said.

Some of the victims' parents have died before being able to see Rolling's execution date named, Ricky Paules said. "I'm sorry some of the parents aren't around to be here at this moment.

"Both Ricky Paules and Dianna Hoyt, the stepmother of victim Christa Hoyt, said they would attend Rolling's execution.

"I don't think there's any closure for something like this," said Hoyt of Alachua County. "But there is gratification to know that he can no longer think about the killings and get pleasure out of thinking about what he did. I really do believe that he deserves to be put to death; I want it to be over.

"Christa's father, Gary Hoyt, who was 63 when he died in 2000 from heart trouble and stress, was hurt that he couldn't live to see his daughter's killer be brought to justice, Dianna Hoyt said.

"It's been such a long time and things like this shouldn't have to take so long," Dianna Hoyt said. "There isn't a day that goes by that you don't think about it.

"Whether Rolling or his attorneys will succeed with an appeal remains to be seen.

"To me, there are no substantive issues," Cervone said.

However, he added, "There will, I am sure, be a flurry of attempts to get judicial relief."

Carolyn Snurkowski, assistant attorney general for the state of Florida, said Rolling has exhausted his state and federal appeals. But, she added, the possibility exists he could challenge the lethal injection method of execution or find a new course of appeal.

"We just have to wait to see what's going to happen next," Snurkowski said.

Smith agreed there is a real chance Rolling could delay the execution by challenging lethal injection.

The case of Clarence Hill, the condemned cop killer who was executed in Florida this week, opened the door to claims the method constitutes cruel punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled such challenges can be made under federal civil rights laws, though the court allowed Hill's execution to go forward before his case could proceed.

Monticello attorney Baya Harrison, who represented Rolling on his appeals, said the courts will again be petitioned to stop the execution. But he wasn't sure how effective they will be."We're going to leave no stone unturned," he said. However, he added that none of the appellate issues have been met with success.

Rolling has argued over the effectiveness of his legal representation leading up to his plea and said the case should have been tried outside of Alachua County, where residents had been traumatized by the slayings.

"With the way the legal system is today and the fact that we have been through so many courts, frankly we're very concerned. Our options are just fewer and fewer," Harrison said.

Rolling's defense attorneys plan to contact attorneys in Gainesville who previously represented Rolling and Hill's Lake City attorney Todd Doss for advice on how to proceed on the case.

Considering an argument challenging the lethal injection issue, Harrison said, "It doesn't seem terribly hopeful in that Mr. Doss, who represented Mr. Hill, he put up a tremendous effort to obtain hearings for Mr. Hill. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court said that he had a right to raise the issue, they never granted him a hearing.

"Rolling is housed at Union Correctional Institution near Raiford. He had previously been imprisoned for robbery in other states, including Alabama and Mississippi. He had said he killed a person for every year he spent in prison. Although never convicted, he also was accused of three murders in Louisiana.

In a 17-page letter sent to The Associated Press in 2000, Rolling attributed the student murders to abuse he as a child and his treatment in prison.

"A mangy dog gets more consideration than what I received in Parchman (a Mississippi prison). Imagine ... being forced to dwell in a prison cell that floods out two to three times a week with putrefied raw sewage, and having to exist in such filth for over eight months till it drives you crazy as a loon.

"He ended the letter by saying, "Any complaint I may have pales in comparison to the terrible wrong I inflicted upon good people. I stand in the shadow of their suffering. If it is to be mercy, then I shall be eternally grateful. If it to be the wrath of vengeance, then God grant me the strength to face what I must. For I owe a debt I cannot repay ... not even with my own life."

Rutherford executionOn Friday, Bush also set a new execution date for Arthur Rutherford, 56, who was convicted of drowning a Milton woman in her bathtub in 1985. Rutherford had previously been scheduled to be executed in January, but the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay. His execution is set for Oct. 18.

Lise Fisher can be reached at 374-5092 or fisherl@gvillesun.com

Rolling, suspect in '89 triple slaying here, to die in Florida

2006-09-24T05:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060923/BREAKINGNEWS/60923003

Rolling, suspect in '89 triple slaying here, to die in Florida

September 23, 2006

By John Andrew Prime

jprime@gannett.com

Former Shreveport drifter Danny Rolling, convicted of the 1990 slayings of five college students in Gainesville, Fla., and the chief suspect in a gruesome 1989 triple slaying here, will die by lethal injection Oct. 25.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed Rolling's death warrant Friday for Rolling, who pleaded guilty to the college-city slayings of Sonja Larson, 18, of Deerfield Beach; Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; Christa Hoyt, 19, of Archer; and Tracy Paules, 23, and Manuel Taboada, 23, both of Miami.Three of the five victims were mutilated. One woman was decapitated, her head placed on a bookshelf, her torso slit from neck to waist.

Three of the four women were raped. Several of the bodies were posed for shock value. A knife was used in all of the killings.

Discovery of the students’ bodies shocked Florida and the nation. But the crimes also resonated in Shreveport, where similarities were seen between the slayings of the college students and the torture deaths of a local family.

Rolling was never tried for the slayings, but an arrest warrant from the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s office has remained prepared since the early 1990s, requiring only a judge’s signature.

“Nothing has changed," Shreveport police Lt. Danny Fogger told The Times in 2000. "We’ve long had enough evidence to arrest him.”

But the state of Florida made it clear Rolling would never be extradited to a state where he might be convicted and sentenced to a jail term. That could set up a separate legal battle over whether he could be forcibly returned to a state where he faced death.

Rolling's connection with the Florida slayings was revealed through the work of Shreveport police detectives, who notified Florida investigators that Rolling, arrested in Florida for an unrelated armed robbery, was the suspect in the Grissom slayings. That prompted a check of his DNA against that found at the college slayings. There was a match.

Rolling, who also was the suspect in the shooting of his father here before moving to Florida, blamed his actions on childhood abuse and the way he was treated in prison.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

In 2000 letter, Rolling blamed prison, abuse for killings

2006-09-24T05:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/15586434.htm

Posted on Fri, Sep. 22, 2006

In 2000 letter, Rolling blamed prison, abuse for killings

Associated Press

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - In a 17-page letter sent to The Associated Press in 2000, serial killer Danny Rolling attributed his murder of five Gainesville college students to the abuse he suffered as a child and his treatment in prison.

Rolling, who was scheduled Friday to die Oct. 25, said he killed one person for every year he spent in prison. He served a total of eight years in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. He was accused of three murders in Louisiana but never prosecuted.

"A mangy dog gets more consideration than what I received in Parchman (a Mississippi prison). Imagine ... being forced to dwell in a prison cell that floods out two to three times a week with putrefied raw sewage, and having to exist in such filth for over eight months till it drives you crazy as a loon."

The letter ended with an apology of sorts.

"Any complaint I may have pales in comparison to the terrible wrong I inflicted upon good people. I stand in the shadow of their suffering. If it is to be mercy, then I shall be eternally grateful. If it to be the wrath of vengeance, then God grant me the strength to face what I must. For I owe a debt I cannot repay ... not even with my own life."

The Death Warrant - Danny Rolling

2006-09-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.wcjb.com/news.asp?id=14201

Danny Harold Rolling Death Warrant 9/23/2006

DEATH WARRANT

WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, did on the 24th day of August, 1990, murder Sonya Larson; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, did on the 24th day of August, 1990, murder Christina Powell; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, did on the 25th day of August, 1990, murder Christa Hoyt; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, did on the 27th day of August, 1990, murder Manny Taboada; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, did on the 27th day of August, 1990, murder Tracy Paules; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, did on the 15th day of February, 1994, enter a plea of guilty to five counts of First Degree Murder; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, on the 20th day of April, 1994, was sentenced to death for the murder of victim Sonya Larson; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, on the 20th day of April, 1994, was sentenced to death for the murder of victim Christina Powell; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, on the 20th day of April, 1994, was sentenced to death for the murder of victim Christa Hoyt; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, on the 20th day of April, 1994, was sentenced to death for the murder of victim Manny Taboada; and
WHEREAS, DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, on the 20th day of April, 1994, was sentenced to death for the murder of victim Tracy Paules; and
WHEREAS, on the 20th day of March, 1997, the Supreme Court of Florida affirmed the death sentences received by DANNY HAROLD ROLLING; and
WHEREAS, on the 17th day of November, 1997, the United States Supreme Court denied the Petition for Writ of Certiorari; and
WHEREAS, on June 27, 2002, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s denial of the Motion for Post-Conviction Relief; and
WHEREAS, on July 1, 2005, the United States District Court, Northern District, denied a Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus; and
WHEREAS, on February 9, 2006, the United States 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s denial of the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus; and
WHEREAS, on June 26, 2006, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the 11th Circuit Court Appeals denial of the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus; and
WHEREAS, no appeals are pending; and
WHEREAS, it has been determined that Executive Clemency, as authorized by Article IV, Section 8(a), Florida Constitution, is not appropriate; and
WHEREAS, attached hereto is a certified copy of the record pursuant to Section 922.052, Florida Statutes;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JEB BUSH, as Governor of the State of Florida and pursuant to the authority and responsibility vested in me by the Constitution and Laws of Florida, do hereby issue this warrant directing the Warden of the Florida State Prison to cause the sentence of death to be executed upon DANNY HAROLD ROLLING, in accordance with the provisions of the laws of the State of Florida.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have

hereunto set my hand and
caused the Great Seal of the
State of Florida to be affixed
at Tallahassee, the Capitol,
this 22nd day of September, 2006.

Danny Rolling

2006-09-24T05:24:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Rolling

Danny Rolling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article documents a current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

Daniel Harold Rolling (born 26 May 1954), known as the "Gainesville Ripper", is the convicted murderer and mutilator of five students in Gainesville, Florida, in August 1990.
He was also suspected of—but never tried on—a triple homicide on November 24, 1989, in Shreveport, Louisiana, and the attempted murder of his father in May 1990.

As a result of his murder convictions, Rolling is scheduled to die by lethal injection on October 25, 2006, at 6 p.m. EST. [1]

Danny Rolling was born to James and Claudia Rolling. His father was abusive to both him and his mother, and later his brother, Kevin. Claudia Rolling made repeated attempts to leave her husband, but always returned. Rolling's father was a police officer.

After several incarcerations as a teen and young adult for a string of robberies in Georgia, Rolling had trouble trying to assimilate into society and hold down a steady job.

Finally, after years of abuse, Rolling attempted to kill his father during an argument with the elder Rolling. He later fled to the state of Florida where he began his burglary and robbery spree, which culminated in the murders of five people in Gainesville. His signature was to arrange the bodies in such a way as to highlight the carnage in the rooms — this even included setting up several mirrors.

Although law enforcement authorities initially had very few leads and the investigation dragged on for years, Rolling was eventually charged with several counts of murder, and Alachua County State Attorney Rod Smith oversaw the prosecution. Rolling was convicted nearly four years after the murders occurred, and sentenced to the death penalty in each case.

A second man, Edward Humphrey of Indialantic, Florida, was considered an initial suspect in the Gainesville murders; authorities cleared him of all charges after Rolling's arrest.

Rolling aided the writing career of Sondra London, who met him in prison while working with Gerard John Schaefer and other serial killers.

Rolling and the Gainesville murders are the subject of the book Beyond Murder by John Philpin and John Donnelly. The murders have been suggested to have been the inspiration for the original screenplay for Scream, though the similarities may merely be circumstantial.

Rolling was the subject of an episode of "Body of Evidence: From the Case Files of Dayle Hinman", a Court TV show. During Rolling's trial, Court TV ran an interview with his mother from her home, during which someone shouting and complaining (presumably Rolling's father) off-camera can be heard.
[edit]

References
^ "Rolling Execution Date Set" WCJB News

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Rolling"

Danny Rolling

2006-09-24T05:22:00.000-07:00

Danny Rolling

Name: Daniel (Danny) Harold Rolling

AKA: The Gainesville Ripper

Birthdate: May 26th, 1954

Birthplace: Shreveport, Georgia

Victims:

Names Dates Ages

Tom Grissom November 4, 1989
Julie Grissom November 4, 1989 24
Sean Grissom November 4, 1989 8
Sonja Larson August 8, 1990 (discovered) 17
Christina Powell August 8, 1990 (discovered) 17
Christa Hoyt August 25, 1990 18
Tracey Paules August 27, 1990 23
Manuel Taboada August 27, 1990 23

Rolling, seeking life term,

2006-09-24T05:05:00.000-07:00

www.sptimes.com/News/071200/photos/st-rolling.jpg

Rolling, seeking life term,says, 'I am not a monster'

Ten years ago, Danny Rolling killed five college students. Now he's saying his lawyers were incompetent and he shouldn't be executed.

[AP photo]Rolling ponders his future in court Tuesday.

By BARRY KLEIN

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 12, 2000

Hoyt
Larson
Paules
Powell
Taboada

GAINESVILLE -- Ann Garren greatly resents that Danny Rolling already has lived a decade longer than her daughter, one of five students he murdered and mutilated in a killing rampage that terrorized this college town in 1990.

That's why she was back here Tuesday, forcing herself to listen as the confessed killer swore in court that he is "not a monster."

"He is a monster," said an angry Garren, who thinks Rolling should die -- and soon -- despite his latest appeal, in which he claims he was sentenced to death because of incompetent counsel.
As evidence, Rolling is citing his attorneys' unwillingness to move the case from Gainesville. He hopes to gain a new sentencing hearing and a shot at a life sentence.

The dozen relatives of his victims who sat through Tuesday's session are confident that won't happen. But they are worried about the growing national debate over the fairness of capital punishment, which they fear could allow Rolling to cheat the executioner.

"That would be just horrendous," said Ada Larson, the mother of Sonja Larson, one of Rolling's first victims.

Next month will mark 10 years since Rolling, 46, used a Marine Corps K-Bar knife to mark his spot among America's most notorious killers.

His murderous frenzy lasted for four nights.

He tied up his female victims with duct tape before stabbing them to death. He raped three of them and decapitated one. The others he posed in lewd positions.

Rolling has never explained why.

The crimes terrified Gainesville. Some students withdrew from school. Some of those who returned came back armed.

Hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement officers invaded the town, as did almost as many reporters and television cameras.

Rolling eventually confessed and pleaded guilty on the day his trial was to start in 1994. A jury was seated for the sentencing phase and unanimously recommended death.

Now Rolling is in court arguing that the notoriety he created with his crimes entitles him to a new sentencing.

Rolling claims that his attorneys at the time, the Alachua County public defender and his chief assistant, should never have talked him into keeping the trial in Gainesville.

There was too much pretrial publicity, all of it highly unfavorable to Rolling, argues Baya Harrison, the Monticello lawyer specially appointed by the state to represent Rolling.
He said that decision alone constitutes proof of inadequate representation.

"Of all the places on the planet, Gainesville was not the proper venue for a thousand reasons," Harrison said.

Rolling testified Tuesday that his attorneys told him Gainesville was a good place for the trial since it was a liberal college town. He said they told him it was his best chance for an unbiased jury.

"I didn't feel comfortable about having the trial here," said Rolling, who admitted having a hazy memory of the two-hour conversation with his attorneys.
"The people of Gainesville had been badly wronged," he said. "They looked at me from the viewpoint that I was a monster. I am not a monster."

Rod Smith strongly disagrees. He was Gainesville's new state attorney when the murders happened. He said the evidence alone was enough to put him in a prolonged depression.
He is still the state attorney but now he is in the position of having to defend the work of the lawyers he beat six years ago.

He said it isn't a problem.

Before being sentenced to death, Rolling pleaded guilty to five murders, three sexual batteries and three armed robberies, Smith said.

"They are saying if their strategy had been different, the outcome would have been different," he said. "Where? On the moon?"

Garren, the mother of Christa Hoyt, one of Rolling's victims, said the relatives never cared where the trial was held. "We just wanted the death penalty."

The hearing is expected to continue until at least Saturday. Circuit Judge Stan Morris, who presided over the sentencing six years ago, has not said when he will rule.

His decision will be critical for Rolling, who already has had two pleas for a new trial turned down by the Florida Supreme Court.

He is beginning to run out of time.

Prisoners sentenced to death in Florida spend an average of 11.3 years on death row. Rolling has been there six years.

Officials have said his first death warrant could be signed as early as next year.
While several of the victims' relatives said Tuesday that a day rarely passes when they don't think about what Rolling did, his legacy in Gainesville began fading long ago.

There hasn't been a memorial ceremony for the victims for five years. The only visual reminders are five trees planted near the University of Florida library, a plaque in a local park and a single panel on a stretch of wall along SW 34th Street, a shrine of sorts that was dedicated to the victims' memories days after the murders.

It says simply, "We remember," along with their names: "Sonja Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Leigh Hoyt, Tracy Paules, Manuel Taboada."
College towns are transitory places, one of the features that attracted Rolling here in the first place. Most of today's students were young children when the murders happened.
To them, Rolling is just a name.

"The only thing I remember is that my parents wouldn't let me stay home alone," said Maggie Little, a 19-year-old psychology major who grew up in Gainesville.
Scott Paules knows just how big a deal it was. He is the brother of Tracy Paules, one of Rolling's final victims.
Scott said Tuesday was the first time he saw Rolling in person. He said he felt little emotion.
"I don't spend time thinking of what I want to do to him," he said. "I spend time thinking about my family -- my mom, my dad, and especially my sister."

- Times correspondent Beth Kassab contributed to this report.

College students' killer to be executed

2006-09-24T03:29:00.000-07:00

September 23, 2006

Florida

College students' killer to be executed

Gov. Jeb Bush signed the death warrant to execute Danny Rolling, the man who
murdered five students in Gainesville.

BY GARY FINEOUT AND STEPHANIE GARRY, Miami Herald

TALLAHASSEE - Danny Rolling, the notorious serial killer who murdered five
college students and plunged the town of Gainesville into a frenzy of fear
16 years ago, will be executed next month, Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday.

The governor signed a death warrant to execute Rolling, who joined Ted Bundy
and Aileen Wuornos in the history books as Florida's most horrific killers.
Rolling, 52, exhausted all of his appeals in June and is scheduled to be
strapped to a gurney and given an injection of deadly chemicals at 6 p.m.
Oct. 25.

In quick succession in August 1990, Rolling killed five students, four of
them young dark-haired women, the other the male roommate of one of the
victims. He raped three of the women, then stabbed and mutilated them. He
decapitated one of the victims and left the head on a shelf facing the front
door, posed for police to see.

The five bodies were found on successive days as the fall semester began at
the University of Florida. All five victims were students at UF or nearby
Santa Fe Community College.

GROWING HYSTERIA

With each discovery, fear turned into terror, which rose to hysteria.
Students bought baseball bats, Mace and guns. Parents jammed telephone
lines, urging their children to come home. Several hundred students left
that semester and never returned.

Rolling's victims: Christi Powell, 17, of Jacksonville; Sonja Larson, 18, of
Deerfield Beach; Christa Hoyt, 18, of Gainesville; Tracy Paules, 23, of Palm
Springs North, and Manny Taboada, 23, of Carol City.

''We don't much care if they burn him, stick him or hang him, as long as
they kill him,'' George Paules, father of Tracy Paules, told The Associated
Press.

Tommy Carroll, a childhood friend of Paules and Taboada who was the first to
find their bodies, told The Miami Herald Friday evening that Rollings was
``an animal.''

''We've been looking forward to this day for so long,'' he said. He said of
Rolling's execution: ``We will be there. I want to be inside and watch it.''

''It's far past time for Danny Rolling to face justice,'' said Rod Smith,
now a state senator from Alachua, who as state attorney prosecuted Rolling.
``The victims have waited for far too long.''

Art Sandeen, UF's vice president for student affairs at the time of the
murders and now a professor at the university, said he doesn't believe in
the death penalty. But for those who do, he said, he hopes the governor's
decision will bring some closure.

''It'll always be a part of everybody's life who was here,'' he said Friday.
``It was the worst of times. Those feelings for those five people will never
go away.''

Sandeen pointed out that most current UF students were 3 or 4 years old at
the time of the murders.

''Frankly, I'd be happy that this generation of students for the most part
is probably fairly unaware that this took place,'' he said. ``It's part of
the institutional memory, that's for sure.''

Rolling, a drifter from Shreveport, La., camped in a wooded area near the
apartments where the students lived off campus. Shortly after the killings,
he fled town and went to Tampa and then Ocala.

MASSIVE INVESTIGATION

With police engaged in a massive investigation in Gainesville, no one
noticed when Rolling was arrested on charges he robbed an Ocala Winn-Dixie
in September 1990. He pleaded guilty to the crime. It wasn't until months
later that blood tests linked Rolling to the Gainesville murders. He is also
suspected of three killings in Shreveport, but was never prosecuted.

Rolling pleaded guilty to the Gainesville murders in 1994, and his case
wound its way through the legal system until his appeals ran out in June.

State officials said the delay was partly due to the legal battle over
lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution of cop-killer
Clarence Hill in January after his attorneys raised questions as to whether
the deadly combination of chemicals used in lethal injection caused pain.
Hill was executed Wednesday after courts rejected his arguments over lethal
injection.

Today, the biggest reminder of the Gainesville murders is not the apartment
complexes where the killings happened, but the black-and-white memorial on a
graffitied wall on 34th Street, a main thoroughfare that runs along the west
side of the UF campus.

Few messages escape the constant painting of the wall, but the about
10-foot-long black section bears the words ''We remember,'' and in white,
the names of the five victims.

Gatorwood Apartments, where Rolling killed his last two victims, has been
closed. In the past month, it has been set on fire twice for local
firefighters to practice on.

---

Source : Miami Herald

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/15590187.htm

Two prisoners set to die in October

2006-09-24T02:14:00.000-07:00

September 23, 2006 Florida

Two prisoners set to die in October

By Paul Flemming, Tallehassee Democrat

Gov. Jeb Bush on Friday evening set execution dates for two prisoners -Danny Rolling, the notorious Gainesville killer who pleaded guilty to the1990 murders of five University of Florida students in the college town; andA.D. Rutherford, a Milton man who was set to die in January but got alast-minute stay

Rolling murdered and mutilated Sonya Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt,Manny Taboada and Tracy Paules over three days in August 1990. His executionis set for Oct. 25.

Rutherford, a Milton native, was sentenced to death for the beating anddrowning death of Stella Salamon on Aug. 22, 1985. He is now scheduled todie Oct. 18 at 6 p.m.

Bush on Friday evening set the new execution date for Rutherford, extendingan existing death warrant. He was set to die in January when the U.S.Supreme Court granted him a last-minute stay.

The execution dates for Rolling and Rutherford come two days after the stateexecuted another prisoner. Clarence Hill's lawyers failed to get a hearingthat Florida's three-drug cocktail might cause excruciating pain. Hisappeals claiming the state's lethal-injection methods were unconstitutionalwas rejected by federal courts, but on the basis that his claims were filedtoo late.

Rutherford's January stay from the highest court came a week after Hill's.Bush said in a letter to Florida State Prison Warden Randall Bryant that theSupreme Court's stay was lifted July 21.Calls to Rutherford's attorneys were not immediately returned.

Rutherford and Rolling would be the 62nd and 63rd prisoners executed inFlorida since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. There are 376inmates on the state's Death Row. ---Source : Tallehassee Democrat
Tallahassee Democrat

Warrant issued 9-22-2006 - Danny Rolling

2006-09-24T01:56:00.000-07:00

Danny Rolling

01-625
Docket
Danny Rolling

01-625
Docket
Warrant issued 9-22-2006 &

execution scheduled for 10-25-2006.

Updated 9-22-2006

Danny Rolling's Execution Date Set

2006-09-24T01:27:00.000-07:00

TALLAHASSEE, FL (AP) --

Governor Bush has signed a death warrant for a man who pleaded guilty to the grisly 1990 killing of five Gainesville college students.He'll be executed October 25th.

Rolling entered his guilty plea in 1994 and a jury unanimously recommended five death sentences. A Circuit Court judge sentenced him to death for the killings and life in prison for three sexual batteries and armed burglaries.

Rolling was a drifter from Louisiana who killed four women and one man in their off-campus apartments.He lost an appeal earlier this year before the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.17-year-old Christina Powell of Jacksonville was among the five students killed by Rolling in the fall of 1990.