Rapist and three-time murderer Oba Chandler, who's scheduled to be receive his lethal injection at 4 p.m. on November 15, doesn't want to be executed. Imagine that.
Chandler's lawyer filed a motion in a circuit court today seeking to have Chandler's death sentence thrown out, claiming the state's judicial method of death-penalty sentences violates the Sixth Amendment.
The claim is that by the state's procedure of having a judge impose the death penalty, it violates a defendant's right to a jury trial. The jury actually recommended that Chandler receive the death penalty, but since the judge is the one who actually imposed it, this will likely have to occupy time in a courtroom.
Chandler, 65, was the second recipient of a death warrant under Gov. Rick Scott's governorship, and has been hanging out on death row for the past 17 years.
According to the Florida Commission on Capital Cases, Chandler killed Joan Rogers and her two daughters, Michelle and Christe, more than 22 years ago.
Rogers and her two daughters were on vacation in Tampa from Ohio and checked into their hotel on June 1, 1989.
After a week of noticing that the family hadn't been in the hotel room, housekeeping staff called the cops. Police found Rogers' car abandoned near the Courtney Campbell Causeway, with a brochure inside containing directions written by Chandler.
The cops found all three of the women on June 4 -- naked from the waist down, arms and legs bound, with a cinder block tied by a rope around their necks.
Autopsy results showed the women died either from asphyxiation from the ropes around their necks or from drowning, and police said Chandler sexually assaulted Rogers.
After police made a connection between the murders and another rape in the area -- which was printed in local news reports -- Chandler left the area.
He lived with his family for the next few years -- including some time spent in Broward County -- before finally being arrested and charged in September 1992.
Since his conviction, Chandler has lost seven appeals of his death sentence in various courts.
And now there's an eighth.
Tip: if you're trying to avoid execution in Florida, don't rape people and murder a family.
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