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The state Supreme Court rules the man's attorney mishandled the penalty phase of his murder trial.
By MATTHEW WAITE
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 19, 2001
Edward Eugene Ragsdale won a chance to dodge the death penalty Thursday when the Florida Supreme Court overturned his sentence for the 1986 murder of a Zephyrhills man.
The court, in a unanimous decision, overruled Circuit Judge Maynard Swanson, saying that 1999 testimony about Ragsdale's being abused as a child, as well a doctor's opinion that Ragsdale was psychotic and brain damaged at the time of the murder, could have affected jurors' opinions toward punishing Ragsdale.
In 1986, Ragsdale and a teenager, Leon Lee Illig, went to the Zephyrhills mobile home of 70-year-old Ernest Mace to steal his wallet, then beat him and finally slashed his throat and left him to die. A neighbor who found the dying man said he still was conscious as he bled and tried to speak but could only gurgle in the last moments of his life.
Illig, then 17, pleaded no contest to murder in 1986 in exchange for a sentence of life in prison. Ragsdale pleaded no contest and was sentenced to die the same year. Since then, appeals have kept him alive.
Ragsdale's attorneys had argued that their client received ineffective counsel during the penalty phase of his trial because his then-attorney, Robert Culpepper, called only Ragsdale's brother -- a witness for the state during the trial -- to offer a defense. No testimony was given about Ragsdale's mental problems, childhood and past, despite evidence of its being available to his attorney.
Family members testified in 1999 about Ragsdale's father beating him, bashing him in the head with a metal pipe and chaining him to a pole for hours in the sun.
"In sum, Ragsdale has clearly established that counsel deficiently handled the penalty phase, and when the evidence which was available is measured against the evidence presented at the penalty phase, there is a reasonable probability of a different result," the court wrote in the decision.
Swanson, in 1999, after hearing testimony from Ragsdale's family, ruled during an earlier appeal that the evidence would have no impact on the jury's decision.
"There is no question about it that Mr. Ragsdale had a difficult childhood," Swanson said at the time.
-- Staff writer Matthew Waite can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6247 or (800) 333-7505, ext. 6247. His e-mail address is waite@sptimes.com.