A veteran Florida death row inmate seeks a reprieve ahead of Thursday’s execution

Lawyers are fighting to stop Jeffrey Hutchinson’s execution Thursday night. The 62-year-old Army veteran claims he is suffering from severe mental health issues alongside the illnesses of the Gulf War.

A 2001 ju judge found Hutchinson guilty of shotguns of his girlfriend and her three young children at a shared home in Okaloosa County. The judge was sentenced to death for the murder of a child.

However, his war-related illness, coupled with more than 20 years of isolation in the death row, caused psychological damage, which he argues, does not reasonably understand what is going on.

“I’ll know this guy for the rest of my life,” said his brother, Robert Hutchinson. “His mental abilities are definitely diminishing.”

Unless lawyers can persuade him to intervene in court, Hutchinson will be killed by a fatal injection at 6pm on Thursday at Florida State Jail near Stark.

Jeffrey Hutchinson, a native of Spokane, Washington, served with the US Army Rangers, an elite unit that was first sent to some of the most dangerous and difficult situations the military encounters. He was at the forefront of the war in Iraq in 1991 and witnessed the horror firsthand, according to records from his family and court. It is believed that he was exposed to sarin gas when the bomb destroyed chemical weapons sites in Iraq.

According to his family, he brought the unusual man back home. He was said to be modest, standoffs, high party run, forgettable and slow. He developed skin rashes and lesions, and frequently developed blood coughing and vomiting.

One neurologist who examined him shortly before his trial discovered that Hutchinson had shown many signs of Gulf War disease.

Doctor William Baumzweiger discovered that he damaged the part of the brain that controls “executive function.” He concluded that Hutchinson’s exposure to chemical or biological weapons during the war led to mental capacity deteriorating when crime occurred.

The state has not stopped seeking the death penalty.

Hutchinson was convicted of the 1998 shotgun murder of his girlfriend Lenny Flaherty and the shotgun shooting of three children of her three children: Logan, 4, Amanda, 7, and Jeffrey (9).

He lived with Flaherty and her children in Okaloosa County, Florida’s Panhandle. Court records say on the night of September 11, 1998, Hutchinson and Flaherty had an argument before they packed their clothes and guns into a truck and ran to the bar.

“Lenny is mad at me,” he told the bartender. After a while of drinking, the witness said, he left the bar and “driving recklessly” when he left.

About 40 minutes later, the 911 call came.

“I just shot my family,” the caller said. “There were a few people here.”

On arrival, sheriff’s deputies spotted Hutchinson lying nearby on the floor of the family’s garage with a cordless phone. In the master bedroom and living room, they found Flaherty and her child. Everything was shot dead by a pistol grip Mossburg shotgun lying on the kitchen counter.

Hutchinson alleged that two men wearing ski masks exploded into the house, shooting Flaherty and the children, according to court records. He said he struggled with them before they escaped.

The allegations were supported by physical evidence from prosecutors presented in court, including gunshot residue in Hutchinson’s hands.

Convicted at the 2001 trial, Hutchinson refused to consider whether the ju judge should receive the death penalty, claiming it was not a crime.

Questions about Hutchinson’s mental state, particularly the effect of his war experience on his mind, drove his case from the start. At trial, his defense attorney called him a “soldier of a soldier who was mentally offensive.” Two mental health experts have expressed their opinion that he suffered from bipolar disorder.

However, Hutchinson refuses to allow insane defenses, demanding that he admit his crime. His defense attorneys have developed compelling evidence related to Hutchinson’s mental state, but the Ju judge has never heard of it.

In the written order of the sentence, Judge G. Robert Baron discovered that the murder of 9-year-old Jeffrey was “particularly violent, violent, or cruel.” He pointed out that after hearing the explosion of a shotgun that killed his family, the boy was believed to have been alive for a while after being shot.

“We will never know the fear this child has experienced,” the judge wrote.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a warrant for Hutchinson’s death a month ago, setting up an execution on Thursday. The warrant noted that Executive Clementy was considered and deemed inappropriate.

Last year ahead of the state’s generous committee hearing, Hutchinson’s family and supporters helped create a documentary-style video.

“He was a soldier who didn’t get the help he needed when he needed it, and that could cause further problems,” his son, Jeffrey Hutchinson, said in the video. “And he deserves some generosity at least for that.”

His defense team claimed he was the target of the plot and had long-standing paranoid belief that he was being monitored and monitored by government agents.

In mid-April, the governor appointed a panel of mental health experts to investigate Hutchinson. He was later considered competent.

So far, the court has refused to postpone the enforcement.

In the meantime, Hutchinson’s family fights to raise awareness about his case. They argue that his story has far more to do than what is presented in court.

His sister and other relatives traveled to Tallahassee this week to make a personal plea to DeSantis.

His brother traveled around the country last week to visit him in prison. He first heard about some of his horrific war experiences.

“He’s very strong in his faith,” said Robert Hutchinson. “He said, “I don’t think God has taken me this far.”