TALLAHASSEE - The series of legal mistakes that resulted in four separate trials and one of the longest stays on Death Row does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, the Florida Supreme Court ruled this week.
The high court also ruled the death penalty should stand in the case of William Duane Elledge, who has been on Death Row 31 years.
Elledge, 55, was convicted of raping and strangling Hollywood waitress Margaret Anne Strack in 1974.
The carnival-worker and drifter confessed to Strack's murder and subsequently pleaded guilty to the robbery and murder of Edward Gaffney in Fort Lauderdale and Kenneth Nelson in Jacksonville.
But, in the decades that followed, Elledge argued that prosecutorial misconduct, a bad defense attorney, and one of the longest stays on Death Row in state history, robbed him of justice and merits a new sentence -- life in prison.
His attorney, Hilliard Moldof, of Fort Lauderdale, called Elledge ``the poster boy for why we shouldn't be spending all this money and time trying to execute people.''
The high court unanimously rejected those arguments in a 44-page ruling and pointedly laid out the legal precedent for rejecting his arguments.
The court made no comment on Elledge's extended length of stay on Death Row.
Justice Harry Lee Anstead wrote a concurring opinion.
