FLORIDA:
CLEMENCY SOUGHT AFTER 31 YEARS ON DEATH ROW
Michael Lambrix is seeking commutation of his death sentence. If he is denied
clemency, the Florida
authorities will set an execution date. He has spent over half of his life on
death row.
Twenty-three years old when he was sent there in 1984, he turns 55 in March.
View the full Urgent Action, including case information, addresses and sample
messages, here.
Clarence Moore and Aleisha Bryant were killed on 6 February 1983 and buried in
a shallow grave near
the trailer home that Cary Michael Lambrix shared with Frances Smith. The
latter was arrested three
days later on an unrelated matter and led police to the grave, a tire iron
allegedly used as a
murder weapon, and a shirt belonging to Michael Lambrix with blood on it.
Michael Lambrix was
charged with murder. His trial in 1983 ended in a mistrial after the jury could
not agree on a
verdict. At retrial in 1984, the jury voted to convict him of two counts of
first-degree murder and
recommended the death penalty, by 10 votes to two for one murder and eight to
four for the other.
Michael Lambrix maintains his innocence of pre-meditated murder, claiming that
he acted in
self-defense when Clarence Moore fatally attacked Aleisha Bryant and came at
him when he tried to
stop the assault.
The prosecution’s key witness for its case against Michael Lambrix was Frances
Smith, who testified
that Lambrix had killed the victims. The judge did not allow the defense to
raise prior inconsistent
statements she had given to police. Deborah Hanzel, who was living with Smith’s
cousin at the time,
testified that Michael Lambrix had told her that he killed the victims. She
recanted this in 2003,
saying that Lambrix “never told me at any time or in any manner indicated to me
that he killed the
victims”. She said that Frances Smith had told her “she didn’t really know what
happened outside but
that Mr Lambrix had told her that the guy [Moore] went nuts and he had to hit
him”. Deborah Hanzel
said that she had lied because she had been asked by Smith to corroborate her
story and had done so
“due to the fear instilled in me” about Lambrix “by Frances Smith and state
officials”. She was
recanting now, she said, because “I cannot run from the truth. I do not want to
feel the guilt
anymore”.
The trial jury did not hear compelling mitigating evidence of Michael Lambrix’s
severely abusive
childhood. According to evidence raised on appeal through numerous affidavits,
he bore the brunt of
his alcoholic father’s violence, which on occasion required the boy’s
hospitalization. When Michael
Lambrix was two years old his father kicked him off his tricycle and through a
plate glass window,
causing serious cuts and bleeding. On another occasion, he threw the boy
against a wall that caused
a cut “so deep that I could see his skull”, according to his mother, who
“thought he was dead”.
Physical and later sexual abuse continued after Michael Lambrix’s parents
divorced and his father
obtained custody of the children.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Cary Michael Lambrix was one of seven children. In a sworn statement made
during appeals, his mother
recalled that after the birth of their first child, “my husband began using
threats of violence
toward the baby if I did not do what he wanted. These threats intensified with
each child”. His
mother contracted polio in 1957, leaving her “paralyzed on my right side from
the waist down”. In
her statement, she said that her husband would rape her on the special bed she
had to use for polio
treatment. She said that during her pregnancy with Michael, conceived in such a
rape, her husband
“constantly assaulted me”. Michael was born in March 1960 and his mother filed
for divorce in 1965,
obtaining a temporary restraining order against her husband. However, after a
five-month
hospitalization required when he threw her against a wall, she became less able
to parent, and he
was given custody of the children on the condition that he hire a full-time
housekeeper. The father
and housekeeper subsequently married, and according to the family she was also
violent. “Though most
us got beaten by both our father and our stepmother,” one of Michael’s sisters
said in an affidavit,
“Cary got beaten much more often, really every day, and he got it much worse
too. He always had
black and blue marks on his legs and back”. Neighbors and others also
recognized signs of abuse, and
signed affidavits to that effect. For example, one person wrote: “Through the
years I recall seeing
Cary come to school with black eyes and bruises up and down his arms… I recall
one time I was with
Cary and his father at a fast food restaurant. Cary was standing next to his
father, who was
ordering food. For no reason at all Cary’s father turned around and struck Cary
hard in the face in
front of me and others…” Another person who met Michael Lambrix as a young
teenager and who became
friends with him recalled in another affidavit “I learned very quickly that
Cary was physically
abused by his father… I remember being shocked and disgusted when I saw the
bruises that covered
Cary. Most of his body was discolored and raw… I had never seen anything like
this, and I couldn’t
understand how a father could do that to his son”.
View the full Urgent Action here.
Name: Cary Michael Lambrix (m)
Issues: Death penalty, Imminent execution, Legal concern
UA: 31/15
Issue Date: 12 February 2015
Country: USA
Please let us know if you took action so that we can track our impact!
EITHER send a short email to u...@aiusa.org with "UA 31/15" in the subject line,
and include in the
body of the email the number of letters and/or emails you sent.
OR fill out this short online form to let us know how you took action.
Thank you for taking action! Please check with the AIUSA Urgent Action Office
if sending appeals
after the below date. If you receive a response from a government official,
please forward it to us
at u...@aiusa.org or to the Urgent Action Office address below.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Please write immediately in English or your own language:
* Calling for Cary Michael Lambrix to be granted clemency and for his death
sentence to be
commuted;
* Noting the circumstantial nature of the state’s case, the Hanzel
recantation, and the
non-unanimous jury;
* Expressing concern that the jury did not hear compelling mitigating
evidence about his
background.
PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 26 MARCH 2015 TO:
Governor Rick Scott
Office of the Governor, The Capitol
400 S. Monroe St.
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001, USA
Email: rick.sc...@eog.myflorida.com
Salutation: Dear Governor
Office of Executive Clemency
Florida Parole Commission, 4070 Esplanade Way
Tallahassee, FL 32399-2450, USA
Email: clemency...@fpc.state.fl.us
Fax: 011 1 850 414-6031 or 011 1 850 488-0695
Salutation: Dear Members of the Clemency Board
Please share widely with your networks: http://bit.ly/1708373
We encourage you to share Urgent Actions with your friends and colleagues! When
you share with your
networks, instead of forwarding the original email, please use the "Forward
this email to a friend"
link found at the very bottom of this email. Thank you for your activism!
UA Network Office AIUSA │600 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Washington DC 20003
T. 202.509.8193 │ F. 202.509.8193 │E. u...@aiusa.org │amnestyusa.org/urgent
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