Death sentence upheld in child murder
Justices rejected arguments by Matthew Caylor, who was convicted of first-degree murder and sexual battery in the killing of Melinda Hinson.
The girl's body was found under a bed in the Valu-Lodge Motel.
The girl's family had been living at the motel, and Caylor had stayed there before the murder.
Read: Computer issues cause temporary ground stop nationwide for Frontier Airlines
The Florida Supreme Court in 2017 ordered a new sentencing proceeding for Caylor as an outgrowth of a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
During a 2021 sentencing hearing, Caylor waived certain rights, including the right to a jury, according to Thursday's opinion.
Later, however, Caylor sought to withdraw the waiver of a right to a jury — a request that a Bay County circuit judge denied.
The judge sentenced Caylor again to death.
Read: Disney's Star Wars hotel to become Imagineering offices
Caylor's appeal to the Supreme Court, in part, challenged the decision to deny the request for a jury.
But the Supreme Court backed the circuit judge's finding that the request was made in 'bad faith' to cause a delay. 'Because there is substantial evidence supporting the trial court's findings, we conclude the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying Caylor's request to withdraw his waiver of the penalty phase jury,' said Thursday's opinion, written by Justice Renatha Francis.
Caylor, now 49, is an inmate at Union Correctional Institution.
Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
San Francisco and other cities, following a Supreme Court ruling, are arresting more homeless people for living on the streets
Homelessness is on the rise in the United States, and in some places, it is becoming more common for the police to arrest someone for sleeping or living in a public space. In June 2024, the Supreme Court issued a ruling, Grants Pass v. Johnson, that determined it is constitutional to issue citations to or arrest homeless people, even when there is no available shelter. The ruling reversed earlier federal appeals court rulings from 2019 and 2022 that determined cities cannot enforce anti-camping laws against homeless people if there are not enough shelter beds available for them. The Supreme Court's ruling also determined that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments does not protect homeless people from laws criminalizing resting in public places. As someone who has spent more than a decade researching homelessness and speaking with unhoused communities, I have seen firsthand how enforcement of such laws imposes unavoidable hardships on homeless people and makes it harder for them to find a stable home. A rise in punitive action against homelessness In 2024, there were an estimated 771,480 people in the U.S. who experienced homelessness on a single night, the highest number ever recorded. Since June 2024, almost 220 local measures have passed that restrict or ban acts like sleeping, sitting or panhandling in public in cities that include Phoenix; Gainesville, Florida, and Reno, Nevada. The rate of unsheltered homelessness, meaning homeless people who are sleeping in places that are not meant for humans to rest in, like parks or cars, is the highest in California. After the Supreme Court's decision, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in July 2024 that directs state agencies and departments to adopt new policies that remove homeless encampments. Those are temporary outdoor living spaces used by homeless people, often on public or private property. Following this executive order, more than two dozen California cities and towns adopted or considered adopting sweeping bans on homeless encampments. Not every leader has embraced this approach of what some observers call criminalizing homelessness. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, for example, rejected criminalizing homelessness as 'backwards' in June 2024. Nevertheless, many cities are enforcing existing and new bans on homeless encampments more aggressively than before the Supreme Court decision – despite evidence that such enforcement is not effective in dealing with the problem of homelessness. The impacts of aggressive enforcement Research shows that arresting someone without a home for sitting, resting or sleeping in a public place does not reduce homelessness. Instead, encampment sweeps and camping bans typically displace people from one area to another, while discarding or destroying their personal belongings in the process, such as identification cards, medications and sleeping gear. This approach also wastes public resources by paying groups to throw away people's belongings instead of investing that money into actual housing solutions, like creating more affordable housing options. Homeless encampment sweeps by police or other government officials are also shown to make people living in camps sicker, leading to increases in hospitalizations and even deaths among those dependent on drugs or alcohol. A punitive shift in San Francisco San Francisco is an example of an American city with a relatively large homeless population that has taken a more aggressive approach to enforcing bans on homeless encampments over the past year. A few weeks after the Supreme Court decision, then-San Francisco Mayor London Breed promised to be 'very aggressive' in removing homeless encampments. She also said that 'building more housing' would not solve the homelessness crisis. City data shows that in the 12 months since the Supreme Court ruling, San Francisco police had arrested more than 1,000 homeless people for living in a public space – a scale of enforcement rarely seen in the city's past. In the year leading up to the ruling, 111 people were arrested for illegal lodging San Francisco identified approximately 8,300 homeless city residents in 2024. In June 2025, I conducted a survey of 150 homeless people in San Francisco. About 10% of those people who gave a reason for a recent arrest reported being jailed for lodging without permission. Another 6% said they were arrested for trespassing. In the same survey, which is part of an ongoing project, 54% of homeless San Francisco residents reported being forced to move from a public space at least once. Another 8% reported being cited for another reason related to trespassing. A less aggressive path in Portland Other western American cities with large homeless populations have taken slightly different approaches to removing homelessness encampments since June 2024. Portland, Oregon, for example, began enforcing a new daytime camping ban in July 2024. But Portland police have only made 11 arrests of homeless people for camping-related violations over the past year. Other homeless people in Portland have received police citations for other offenses, like trespassing. As part of my June 2025 study, I surveyed 150 homeless Portland residents. About 49% of respondents reported having been arrested at some point in their lives. Though no respondents were arrested for camping in a prohibited place, 68% of people I spoke with reported that police or other government officers forced them to leave a public space at some point over the past year. And 13% of those who gave a reason for being cited by police said it was for camping in a prohibited place. Another 11% of homeless people were cited for some other reason related to living without shelter. As part of the study, I also interviewed residents who had been arrested while living on the street. One Portland resident I interviewed – who asked not to be named to preserve their anonymity – told me they lost the chance to rent an apartment because they were arrested in 2023 on a preexisting, unrelated warrant after a police officer checked their ID – just days before they were supposed to pick up their keys. 'Many unhoused people have warrants simply for failing to appear after being cited for sitting or resting in public space,' they said. 'I was supposed to go get the keys and, bam, I got picked up. I was arrested and went to court. Just me being in jail for five, six or five days screwed it all. I didn't show up to get the keys, and then (the landlord) couldn't get ahold of me, and they had no idea what was going on.' The weeklong jail stay not only pushed this person back onto the street, but it also put them back onto a waiting list for housing – where they remain in 2025. Looking ahead The Supreme Court's 2024 ruling did not mandate that cities criminalize homelessness. But it effectively gave cities the green light to do so without fear of violating people's constitutional protections. The effects of this ruling will be further felt with President Donald Trump's July 24, 2025, executive order that ended federal support for approaches like Housing First, a policy that prioritizes providing homeless people with housing, before any other needed help. The order also calls for involuntarily committing homeless people with mental illness to mental health institutions. As more cities consider tougher encampment ordinances, I think it is worth considering if more punitive measures really address homelessness. Decades of evidence suggest they won't. Instead, arresting homeless people often deepens their poverty, increases displacement and diverts public funding away from the real solution – stable, affordable housing. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Stephen Przybylinski, Michigan State University Read more: Supreme Court to consider whether local governments can make it a crime to sleep outside if no inside space is available Many more Denver teens have experienced homelessness than official counts show Supreme Court rules cities can ban homeless people from sleeping outdoors – Sotomayor dissent summarizes opinion as 'stay awake or be arrested' Stephen Przybylinski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
New York Times
5 hours ago
- New York Times
India's Supreme Court Tells New Delhi to Round Up Stray Dogs
As hundreds of thousands of dogs ranged as usual around the back streets of India's capital on Tuesday morning, it was the city's humans, dog lovers in particular, who were howling. On Monday, the Supreme Court of India, with its offices in the center of New Delhi, ruled that the current legal practices for taking care of the city's stray dog population were inadequate. Within eight weeks, the court declared, all strays must be rounded up and detained permanently in shelters. The judges were responding to the menace of dogs that form packs and attack people. There has been a rash of incidents in recent years in which children have been mauled and in some cases killed by feral dogs. A 6-year-old girl died of rabies in July, setting in motion a train of grief and outrage that led to the Supreme Court. The justices took up the issue without any formal petition, as it does sometimes for matters of public interest. The court's order seemed to contradict the Animal Birth Control law, which requires strays to be vaccinated, sterilized and then returned to the places where they had been picked up. But that strategy has not worked, the court found. 'For the time being, forget the rules and face reality,' a judge on the bench said, as reported by Indian news outlets. The court added that anyone who obstructed or interfered with its order would be held in contempt. Nishaank Mattoo, a lawyer who has argued cases at the Supreme Court and who says he is a dog lover himself, said the judgment was wrong. 'The law says that you cannot displace a dog unless it is suffering from rabies,' he noted. 'And even if you remove it to sterilize it, you need to put it back in its surroundings.' Complying with the court's decision will not be easy for the New Delhi authorities. Yasin Hussain, a veterinarian in the city, called it 'an ill-thought-out and arbitrary order.' The action proposed by the Supreme Court would require that the city's free-roaming dogs, which are estimated to number nearly a million, be placed in facilities that even the justices acknowledge are yet to be built and that would need hefty funding to staff and operate. 'How is it possible to build so many shelters in so short a time?' Dr. Hussain asked. Others expressed related concerns. Antra Khurana, an academic who keeps rescue dogs in her home, said, 'How can the court ask these gentle creatures to be dumped in such large numbers?' By Tuesday, even the political opposition had something to say. Rahul Gandhi, a leader of the Congress Party, wrote on social media, 'These voiceless souls are not 'problems' to be erased.' While the court's language and relatively short deadline for compliance were unusual, its interventions into the mundane affairs of life in the capital are not. For instance, it was the Supreme Court, not lawmakers, that forced New Delhi's fleet of buses and auto-rickshaws to convert from diesel and gasoline to compressed natural gas 25 years ago, and this week the justices ruled on how to remove older diesel vehicles from the city's roads. This time, 'the Supreme Court has ventured into the realm of legislation, which is not within its scope of powers,' Mr. Mattoo said, referring to the justices' creating policy rather than just interpreting and applying existing laws. Even the term 'stray dogs' muddles an already complex issue. In Indian cities, many residents involve themselves in looking after animals that are neither pets nor possessions. Cows, pigeons and monkeys are routinely fed and befriended by neighbors. Many of the same animals can be pests. In a country where rabies is a significant threat, anyone bitten must race to the emergency room for injections. Despite that risk, the loudest response to the court order has come from those defending the strays who loiter around their neighborhoods. In Bengaluru, a giant city in India's south, a group of dog lovers was organizing over social media on Tuesday morning, saying they wanted to present a 'united stand against the removal and harm of community dogs,' even though the Supreme Court order currently applies only to New Delhi.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump Asks Supreme Court To Bless Racial Profiling by Immigration Agents
Normally, when the federal government is credibly accused of violating the Bill of Rights, a government lawyer will tell a federal judge that the alleged misconduct never happened. No way, your honor, the lawyer will protest. No agent of this government ever did anything like that! But Noem v. Perdomo is not a normal case. Instead of disavowing the apparently unconstitutional behavior at its core, the Trump administration is openly embracing that behavior and urging the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to do the same. It is the rare case in which both the government and its opponents agree that federal agents behaved in a specific way; the two sides only disagree about whether the specific behavior should count as good or bad. The specific behavior at issue here is racial profiling. Multiple U.S. citizens have alleged that they were illegally seized by federal immigration agents in Los Angeles based solely on unlawful factors such as their "apparent race or ethnicity," or the fact that they were "speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent." And because these citizens (and others) "are likely to succeed in showing" that they were unlawfully seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled earlier this month, the Trump administration has been temporarily blocked from employing such tactics as part of its immigration crackdown in the greater Los Angeles area. In response, the Trump administration is now asking the Supreme Court to lift the block and let the roundups begin again. And in its latest legal filing, the administration made no efforts to deny that its agents will be relying on racial profiling when they're back in the field. Indeed, according to the emergency application to SCOTUS signed by Solicitor General John Sauer, "apparent ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances." Translation: If a federal agent thinks that someone "looks illegal," the agent should be free to seize that person based only on his "apparent ethnicity" without setting off any sort of Fourth Amendment alarm bells. Furthermore, in response to the argument that the federal government's alleged racial profiling has resulted in an overly broad dragnet that inevitably ensnares innocent U.S. citizens, the Trump administration told the Supreme Court that "the high prevalence of illegal aliens should enable agents to stop a relatively broad range of individuals." Take a moment to let that sink in. The Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to give its blessing to a kind of systematic racial profiling that involves federal agents stopping a "broad range of individuals" based exclusively on factors such as the individuals' "apparent ethnicity." And if the rights of U.S. citizens—such as the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures regardless of your skin color—happen to get trampled along the way, the Trump administration's message to those victimized citizens is this: tough luck. To say the least, the Supreme Court has ample legal reasons to rule against the Trump administration's admitted racial profiling on Fourth Amendment grounds. But will the Court rule that way? Alas, the answer to that question is not so clear. While the current Supreme Court has been a Fourth Amendment defender in some cases, the Court has also been known to tip the scales in favor of law enforcement in others, including even in cases in which it was quite clear that federal agents violated someone's constitutional rights. So, the outcome of this case will likely turn on just how much deference the Supreme Court chooses to extend to Trump's immigration agenda. For better or worse, we will learn the extent of that deference soon enough. The post Trump Asks Supreme Court To Bless Racial Profiling by Immigration Agents appeared first on
