WALTON COUNTY DEATH PENALTY UPHELD

A man sentenced to die in 2012 for a fatal shooting, will remain on death row. Yesterday Walton County Circuit Judge Kelvin Wells ruled that Thomas McCoy was not entitled to a re-hearing of the penalty phase of the trial in which a jury voted 11-1 to recommend he be executed. Wells had previously vacated the death sentence because the jury vote was not unanimous. However, he decided there were sufficient grounds to uphold the original sentence, based on the recent Florida Supreme Court ruling that a unanimous verdict on a first-degree murder case is not necessary if a jury had unanimously found the defendant guilty of a secondary offense.