Judge: Lawyer wasn't late

By Times staff writer

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 4, 2001

Clearwater attorney Charles E. Lykes Jr. was not late filing a petition for post-conviction relief on behalf of a convicted killer, a state judge says.

In an order signed last month, Circuit Judge E. Vernon Douglas of Hamilton County in North Florida also ruled that the death row inmate, Richard Eugene Hamilton, wants Lykes to continue representing him.

Lykes asked the judge to clarify those points after he was criticized by the American Bar Association in a January 2000 memo that was filed in the 1st District Court of Appeal and the Florida Supreme Court.

The Bar's memo was quoted by the St. Petersburg Times last July in a story on private defense lawyers who represent death row inmates.

A spokesperson for the Bar said that the memo, written in part to address problems in Florida's system of appointing counsel for death row inmates, was not intended to criticize any particular lawyer pursuing the review of an inmate's conviction and death sentence.

Hamilton was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 for killing 23-year-old Carmen Gayheart, a Lake City nursing student and mother of two.

Hamilton and a co-defendant who had escaped from a North Carolina prison were convicted of abducting her from a busy Winn-Dixie parking lot. She was raped, choked and shot twice in the back of the head, and her body was dumped in a remote part of Hamilton County.

Recent coverage

System may be slowing appeals (July 17, 2000)

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright