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RICHARD RAEKEAfter rejecting six previous convictions, the Florida Supreme Court backed the jury's finding in a 1986 case.
NEW PORT RICHEY - Seven times a jury has convicted Oscar Ray Bolin Jr. of murder. And seven times Bolin has received a death sentence. None of those convictions stuck until Thursday.
The Florida Supreme Court, after overturning six murder convictions, upheld a jury's guilty verdict against Bolin and the judge's recommendation of the death penalty for the 1986 murder of Teri Lynn Matthews.
"It's wonderful," Matthews' mother, Kathleen Reeves, told the Times on Thursday. "This was the big hurdle. This first trial was the one we couldn't seem to get past."
Bolin, now 42 and a former truck driver and carnival worker, had been convicted of Matthews' murder three times, the latest in October 2001.
Bolin still has two murder cases pending for the deaths of Stephanie Collins and Natalie Blanche Holley in Hillsborough County. Bolin, convicted twice in each case, also had those cases sent back to trial by the state Supreme Court.
Collins, 17, disappeared in November 1986 from a shopping center parking lot in Carrollwood. Her body, beaten and stabbed, was found in a ditch the following month.
Holley, a 25-year-old restaurant manager, was stabbed to death in January 1986. Her body was found in an orange grove in Tampa.
Reeves said Thursday that she stays in touch with the other families and hopes his conviction can be used in his other pending trials.
In overturning many of Bolin's convictions, the Supreme Court said that testimony from Bolin's ex-wife, Cheryl Haffner, could not be admitted in court due to spousal privilege. Under spousal privilege, communication within a marriage is considered confidential unless the crime was committed by one spouse against the other or against their children.
Haffner died after Bolin's 1992 trial for Matthews' murder.
Matthews, a 26-year-old bank clerk, was kidnapped at the Land O'Lakes post office on Dec. 4, 1986. Her car was found at the post office the next morning with the headlights still on and her mail on the ground.
Matthews' body, wrapped in a wet sheet, was found a mile from Bolin's mobile home off State Road 52 in Gower's Corner. She had been beaten and stabbed.
During the trial for Matthews' murder, Bolin's half-brother, Phillip, testified that Bolin woke him on the night of Dec. 4, 1986, and asked him to go outside. Phillip Bolin, then 13, said that once outside he heard moaning coming from a body wrapped in a sheet. He believed it to be an animal but soon realized it was a woman.
Oscar Ray Bolin then hit the woman with a piece of wood, sprayed her with a hose and asked for help loading her body into the back of a Ford tow truck, Phillip Bolin testified.
The court overturned Bolin's 1996 conviction in the Matthews case because the trial judge did not allow his defense team to individually question jurors about their exposure to pretrial publicity.
Bolin's attorney, Doug Connor, argued before the state Supreme Court in August that the trial judge should have excluded several jurors who said they had some knowledge of the case. Connor also said that the judge should have questioned one juror more thoroughly about his emphysema before replacing him with an alternate.
In upholding the death sentence Thursday, the Supreme Court said that there is substantial evidence to uphold Bolin's conviction.
Bolin can still seek post-conviction relief, in which defense attorneys try to raise new evidence and issues in order to receive a new hearing.