Gulf war Army vet Jeffrey Hutchinson to be executed for murder of girlfriend, 3 children

Yahoo

01-05-2025

Gulf war veteran Jeffrey G. Hutchinson is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Florida on May 1 for the 1998 murders of his girlfriend and her three young children in Crestview.
Hutchinson's attorneys have blamed his actions on brain damage and cognitive impairment from injuries suffered during the Gulf War, but an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court was unanimously denied on April 21.
Maria DeLiberato, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives for the Death Penalty and liaison for Hutchinson's legal team, told USA TODAY that there are significant questions around Hutchinson's competency to be executed.
"There should be a pause to have a full and fair and complete hearing to determine the significance of his long-standing mental illness and brain damage and how that impacted him back then, at the time of trial, his sentencing, and how it impacts his ability to proceed with this execution," DeLiberato said.
However, when the state Supreme Court upheld an April 4 ruling against Huchinson from Okaloosa County Circuit Judge Lacey Powell Clark, the court said facts "that he was exposed to sarin gas and numerous explosions while serving in the Middle East as well as his various post-war symptoms" were well-known during or before his trial.
If the execution goes as planned, Hutchinson will be the fourth execution in Florida and the 15th in the United States this year. A fifth Florida execution, for convicted murderer and serial killer Glen E. Rogers, is scheduled for Thursday, May 15, 2025.
The previous executions were James Ford on Feb. 13, Edward James on March 20 and Michael Tanzi on April 8. Florida did not execute any inmates in 2020, 2021 and 2022 but put to death six men in 2023 and one man, Loran K. Cole, in 2024.
Here's what to know.
Jeffrey Glenn Hutchinson, now 62, was convicted and sentenced to death for the quadruple murder in 1998 of his girlfriend Renee Flaherty, 32, and her three children, Geoffrey, 9, Amanda, 7, and Logan, 4.
A former mechanic and security guard before joining the Army and becoming a paratrooper and Army Ranger, Hutchinson was raised in Florida but was living with Flaherty in Spokane, Washington, before they moved to the Sunshine State. Flaherty was estranged from her husband, who was stationed in Alaska, and Hutchinson was twice-divorced.
Jeffrey Hutchinson: War 'broke' Army veteran before quadruple murder of mom, 3 kids, defense says
According to court records, Hutchinson and Flaherty had been fighting on Sept. 11, 1998, before he packed some clothes and firearms into his truck and went to a nearby bar. As he drank, he told the bartender (an acquaintance) that he was "pissed off."
Prosecutors said Hutchinson came back to the house with a Mossberg 12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun and shot and killed the occupants within an hour of leaving the bar. He shot each of the victims once in the head, they said, with the oldest child also shot in the chest.
Hutchinson called the police and told a dispatcher, "I just shot my family." Police arrived to find him spattered with blood and lying in a daze on the garage floor, still holding the phone.
During Hutchinson's sentencing, Florida Circuit Judge G. Robert Barron found that the veteran's Gulf War service didn't correlate to the murders, and said that Geoffrey's death was particularly heinous because he was alive and wounded in the chest when he was killed with a head shot, the Associated Press reported at the time.
"The terror suffered in that moment is incomprehensible to this court," Barron said. "The defendant walked over to that 9-year-old boy and without pity, and without conscience, aimed the shotgun one final time."
A broken promise: He promised to care for Washington mom and her 3 kids. Then he killed them all in Florida.
At times, Hutchinson claimed the murders were carried out by two masked men, that he was heavily intoxicated at the time so it couldn't be first-degree murder, and that he had diminished responsibility due to mental disorders from his service.
Hutchinson was diagnosed as suffering from Gulf War Syndrome, but the trial judge ruled him competent to stand trial. He was found guilty and given three death sentences for the children's murders and a life sentence for Flaherty.
Multiple appeals over the years have been rejected or dismissed by the Florida Supreme Court, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.
Hutchinson's execution is scheduled for 6 p.m. ET on Thursday, May 1, 2025, at Florida State Prison in Raiford.
From 1924 until May 1964, the state of Florida executed 196 people. There were no executions from May 1964 until May 1976.
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, but it was reinstated in 1976. Florida has carried out 107 executions since then.
Glen Rogers, known as "The Casanova Killer" or "The Cross Country Killer," is scheduled to be executed on Thursday, May 15, 2025.
Rogers was convicted and sentenced to death in 1997 for the stabbing murder of Tina Marie Cribbs near Tampa two years previously.
In 1999, Rogers was tried in California for raping and strangling Sandra Gallagher and was sentenced to death again. The two women were part of the four Rogers was believed to have killed, all red-haired and in their 30s, as he was driving across the country in 1995.
At one point, Rogers claimed he'd killed nearly 70 people, although he later said he was kidding. He also claimed to have been paid by O.J. Simpson to kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in 1994, as explained in the documentary "My Brother the Serial Killer."
James Powel, USA TODAY NETWORK, contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Florida execution today: Jeffrey Hutchinson to die for murders