Attorneys for convicted murderer Michael Tanzi are making a last-ditch plea to the U.S. Supreme Court to spare him from execution Tuesday evening.
Tanzi’s attorneys on Friday filed a petition at the U.S. Supreme Court and asked for stay of execution, after the Florida Supreme Court and a federal appeals court last week refused to prevent him from being put to death by lethal injection.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on March 10 signed a death warrant for Tanzi, who murdered Janet Acosta in April 2000 in Monroe County. Tanzi kidnapped Acosta in Miami while she sat in her van reading a book during a lunch break. He sexually battered Acosta and drove to Monroe County, where he strangled her and disposed of her body, according to court records.
Since DeSantis signed the death warrant, Tanzi’s attorneys have raised a series of arguments in state and federal courts to try to halt the execution. In Friday’s petition at the U.S. Supreme Court, they focused on an issue about the role of the jury before Tanzi was sentenced to death.
The jury unanimously recommended the death penalty for Tanzi, with a judge then sentencing Tanzi. But pointing, in part, to a 2024 U.S. Supreme Court opinion related to jury determinations, Tanzi’s attorneys argued Friday that a jury must find what are known as “aggravating” circumstances to justify a death sentence.
Tanzi’s attorneys wrote that his “advisory jury made no findings at all, much less determinations of defined facts necessary to impose death.”
“Mr. Tanzi’s death sentence is — and always has been — unconstitutional at its core,” Friday’s petition said.
But in a brief filed Saturday, the Florida Attorney General’s Office said Tanzi’s attorneys were repackaging arguments that had been rejected in the past. The brief said Tanzi pleaded guilty to the murder and “qualifying violent felonies, kidnapping and carjacking with a weapon,” before the jury recommendation.
“The Florida Supreme Court has consistently held that a defendant is eligible for the death penalty when the jury, during the guilt phase, unanimously finds the defendant guilty of other crimes that satisfy the prior or contemporaneous violent felony aggravator,” the state’s brief said.
As of early Monday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court had not issued a ruling, according to its website.
Tanzi, 48, is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison. If the execution is carried out, Tanzi would be the third Florida inmate put to death this year.
Also, DeSantis has signed a death warrant for Jeffrey Hutchinson, who was convicted in the 1998 murders of his girlfriend and her three children in Okaloosa County. Hutchinson is scheduled to be executed May 1.
