Sarasota girl’s killer to get new sentencing hearing, Florida Supreme Court orders

The Florida Supreme Court has ordered that Joseph P. Smith, the man convicted in the kidnap, rape and murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia in Sarasota in 2004, will receive a new sentencing hearing.

Smith, 55, was sentenced to death in March 2006 after a jury voted 10-2 to recommend he be executed.

However, changing interpretations of Florida’s death penalty law have left Smith’s ultimate punishment unsettled for years.

The U.S. Supreme Court found Florida’s application of the death penalty unconstitutional in a 2016 ruling. Subsequent reinterpretations of the law by the Florida Supreme Court caused Smith’s death sentence to be dropped in April 2018 and then reinstated again in April 2020.

But another precedent impacting Smith’s case was established in November 2020, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled in State v. Okafor and State v. Jackson that previously vacated death sentences cannot be retroactively reinstated.

“We realize that resentencing in a capital case is time-consuming and costly, all at the public’s expense,” justices wrote in the Okafor case. “These considerations, however compelling, do not give us license to exceed the legal constraints on our authority.”

Based on the 2020 rulings, the Florida Supreme Court and attorney general’s office agreed that Smith should also be resentenced for his crime.

“While the State feels that it is patently unjust for a resentencing to be required under the circumstances and the State has concerns about the impact of the decision on a trial court’s traditional power to reconsider its prior rulings, the State acknowledges Jackson and Okafor are controlling precedent in this case,” Assistant Attorney General Christina Pacheco wrote in a March court filing.

“Accordingly, this case should be remanded to the trial court to conduct a capital resentencing.”

Smith’s murder conviction will remain in place during the new proceedings, and only the “penalty phase” of the trial will be revisited.

This story was originally published May 18, 2021 at 4:47 AM.