Ernest Suggs was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his friend Pauline Casey. He has been on death row in Florida for more than 30 years. He has always maintained his innocence. Now, the victim’s own daughter, Laura Johnson, a long-time believer of Mr. Suggs’ innocence, is advocating to stop his execution.

Mr. Suggs was tried and convicted in 1992 and sentenced to death by a non-unanimous jury vote of 7 to 5. Current Florida law requires at least 8 jurors to vote for death, and every state, except Florida and Alabama, requires a unanimous decision to impose a death sentence. If his case was tried today, he would not have been sent to death row.

In 2014, Mr. Suggs’s trial judge, Laura Melvin, wrote a letter to then-Governor Scott asking him to commute Mr. Suggs’ death sentence to life in prison without parole because the jury’s 7-5 vote demonstrates that Suggs’s execution is by no means a unanimous choice.

Regardless of the jury vote, Mr. Suggs should not have ever been convicted as there was no direct evidence linking him to the murder:

• The state produced minimal physical evidence in the case but ultimately presented: 1) Two of Ms. Casey’s fingerprints found on the exterior of the passenger window and one palm print found on the inside of the passenger door handle of Mr. Suggs’s vehicle, which could have been made earlier in the day when Mr. Suggs and Ms. Casey were seen together at a bar; and 2) A stain found on Suggs’s shirt that contained an enzyme matching Ms. Casey’s enzyme type, which is common among 90% of the Caucasian population, as well as in beef, rabbits, squirrels, and other animals. The stain could have been from something as simple as hamburger drippings.

• Law enforcement zeroed in on Mr. Suggs as a suspect immediately because of his involvement in a factually dissimilar prior murder in Alabama, for which he was convicted and had served his time. Upon identifying Mr. Suggs as a suspect, no real investigation was done: less than 6 hours passed from the time it was discovered Ms. Casey was missing until Mr. Suggs was arrested. After that, law enforcement stopped their investigation of other suspects because it “just wasn’t their priority.”  

• Given the weaknesses in their case, the state relied upon the questionable testimony of two jailhouse informants to convict Mr. Suggs, both of whom received preferential treatment after testifying. One snitch was found incompetent by two state experts before Mr. Suggs’s trial.

• There is new evidence in the case. Since Mr. Suggs’s conviction, the victim's daughter, Laura Johnson, shared that while living with her mother and step-father, at the age of 14, she was raped, molested, and impregnated by her step-father Steve Casey. The pregnancy ended in miscarriage by his doing. Ms. Johnson has more recently told counsel that her mother revealed to her, shortly before her murder, that she intended to confront and leave Steve Casey. Mr. Casey has recently been arrested for the sexual assault on Laura.

• There are alternative suspects that have not been investigated thoroughly. Ms. Casey’s husband – Steve Casey – told investigators that he stayed home the night of the murder and sold his truck; but he could not remember whether he sold it for $1,200 or $1,500 and did not remember to whom he sold it. He also told investigators that he was on the phone with his mother until 9:30 p.m. but could not account for his whereabouts between then and about midnight, when he was told Ms. Casey was missing and he returned to the bar.

• A few days after the murder, Steve Casey requested Pauline’s certified military records to file for life insurance and collected $50,000 from the Army. He was the sole beneficiary of the life insurance policy and only had a small window of time to collect said policy after he and Ms. Casey left the military a few months prior to the murder. Indeed, the grace period was about to expire, and a VA employee testified that Steve Casey called the VA to request a certified copy of Ms. Casey’s DD214 form to file for the insurance benefits because she had been murdered.

• It has also come to light since Mr. Suggs’s conviction that Steve Casey has a pattern of abusing women. He has badly beaten multiple ex-wives and ex-girlfriends, including punching them in the face, ribs and arms, dislocating one woman’s jaw, and shattering another woman’s nose.

Mr. Suggs should not be executed while very real questions remain about his guilt. Please join us in requesting that all of the new evidence be considered in this case.