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Execution delayed; bias claim rejected
By CHASE SQUIRES © St. Petersburg Times, published December 8, 2000 DADE CITY -- The state Supreme Court on Thursday gave convicted killer Robert Dewey Glock II a little more time before his scheduled execution, but in a Dade City hearing, Circuit Judge Wayne Cobb rejected arguments that he was the victim of New Jersey racial profiling when he was arrested.
Meanwhile, in Dade City, Cobb listened to nearly three hours of testimony presented by appointed attorney Terri Backhus, who argued that more than 90,000 pages of New Jersey State Police records made public last week show Glock might have been a victim of racial profiling when he was stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1983. The stop led to his confession. Backhus argued that if the traffic stop -- for an illegible license plate -- was illegal, the confession was not allowable in court. Glock and cohort Carl Puiatti, 38, both of Lee County, confessed to abducting Sharilyn Ritchie, a 34-year-old schoolteacher, from a Bradenton mall in August 1983. The two said they took her to an orange grove outside Dade City, stole her jewelry and car, and shot her to death. Backhus argued in a massive brief presented to the court Monday that the trooper who stopped the pair was using illegal racial profiling to decide whom to stop on the highway. Glock, she said, looks Italian, and troopers were trained that Italian men could be involved in organized crime. The attorney was asking Cobb on Thursday to grant her a full hearing where she could call witnesses to look into the traffic stop. "It's very important to look at this in the context of what was happening in 1983," she argued. "If that stop was unconstitutional, then all of the evidence, the fruit from that stop, would have to be suppressed." Assistant State Attorney Douglas Crow disagreed and called her efforts "a fishing expedition" where she was grasping for anything to save her client. Glock, on Wednesday, said if he were just spared the death penalty, he would serve a life sentence without complaint. "Killing, to prove killing is wrong, is wrong," he said. "I think I should have got a life sentence. Put me to work. Maybe I could lose a few pounds." Glock said he leaves his appeal in God's hands. The judge said Backhus was making a groundless appeal. "I don't think you're fishing because fishing indicates you're looking for fish. You're digging for a bag of gold," Cobb said. "That's dreaming and hoping with no basis." Backhus said she would appeal the judge's ruling to the Supreme Court. She is also pursuing with the same court an unrelated technical argument, which led to Thursday's stay of execution, based on state sentencing rules. - Staff writer Cary Davis contributed to this report.
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