Attorneys for a man who shot and killed an Orlando police officer in 2017 asked the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday for a rehearing, pointing to music that was played in circuit court before he was sentenced to death.
The attorneys for Markeith Loyd filed a motion for rehearing two weeks after the Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence in the murder of Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton.
The motion was based on instrumental music that was played while photos of Clayton were shown during the sentencing phase of Loyd’s trial. In its Nov. 16 decision upholding the conviction and sentence, the Supreme Court said the circuit court “abused its discretion in allowing the music to play but that the error was harmless.”
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In the motion Thursday, however, Loyd’s attorneys asked justices to reconsider the harmless-error conclusion.
“Given the uniquely subjective nature of penalty-phase decision-making, erroneous admission of evidence which appeals solely to emotion should be treated as per se reversible error,” the motion said. “This is so because there is no way to calculate to what extent any individual juror’s decision was affected by that evidence.”
Loyd shot Clayton after he was spotted in a Walmart store while facing an arrest warrant in the murder of Sade Dixon, who had been pregnant with his child.
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