Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
WILLIAM R. LEVESQUEAt sentencing, the judge says the killing was pitiless and "designed to inflict a high degree of pain on the victim."
LARGO - Troy Merck Jr. is heading back to death row - again.
A Pinellas-Pasco judge Friday sentenced Merck to death for the 1991 murder of James A. Newton outside a Pinellas Park bar. It is the third time Merck has been sentenced to death for the killing. Two previous sentences were overturned on appeal.
"This killing was . . . pitiless and it was outrageously wicked and it was designed to inflict a high degree of pain on the victim to the admitted enjoyment of the defendant," Circuit Judge Brandt Downey said in sentencing Merck.
Newton's family, sitting in the front row of the courtroom, nodded their heads in agreement.
"Thirteen years is long enough," said Ron Cheek, Newton's stepfather, who with Newton's mother, C.J. Cheek, have never missed a court hearing in the case. "I want to see justice carried out."
Merck, 32, who has violently misbehaved in jail and threatened escape in the past, showed no reaction to the verdict and left court without problem. He was shackled hand and foot.
In previous hearings, Merck has broken out in song or given the victim's family a sarcastic thumbs up. This time, he didn't even look toward the Cheeks.
On Oct. 11, 1991, Newton and several friends went to the City Lites nightclub near Pinellas Park to celebrate his 25th birthday and the birth of his second child. When Newton's party left the club, they found Merck, then 19, leaning on one of their cars.
They asked him to move. Merck tried to pick a fight. Newton, a Little League coach, refused.
So Merck attacked Newton with a hunting knife, stabbing him in the back and chest. Yelling "Happy birthday!" Merck lifted Newton's head by the hair and slashed at his face, then twisted the knife in his neck.
Downey noted in sentencing Merck that the victim suffered 13 stab wounds and could have lived up to five minutes and may have been conscious as he bled to death on the pavement.
Merck was on probation at the time of the killing. He had been convicted of five robberies with a knife.
Merck's first trial ended with a hung jury. He was convicted at his second and a jury voted 9-3 that he be sentenced to death. A second jury voted 12-0 that he be sentenced to death after Merck's first sentence was overturned.
When the second sentence was overturned, a third jury earlier this year voted 9-3 for death.
Defense attorney Michael Schwartzberg had told jurors Merck was an alcoholic and that his drinking and tortured childhood could be used as a reason for a life sentence.
But prosecutors Richard Ripplinger and Brian Daniels told jurors that alcohol was just a poor excuse for Merck's brutality.
"There's never been any remorse," Ron Cheek said. "He's not fit to be in society."