A death row inmate who was awaiting a new trial to determine whether he deserved the death penalty for a 2005 Broward County murder died this week at the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.
No cause of death has been released, but initial indications are that Eric Kurt Patrick died of natural causes, said his lawyer, Michael Orlando of the Regional Conflict Counsel’s Office in Broward County.
Patrick, 60, was granted a new trial on the penalty phase of his conviction for Steven Schumacher’s murder, initially because his jury recommended execution by a 7-5 vote and later because the Florida Supreme Court questioned how effectively his original lawyer vetted potential jurors.
Under current law, a 7-5 vote would not be enough to authorize a death sentence in Florida. Since earlier this year, the threshold has been 8-4. But for about five years, Florida law required a jury to be unanimous.
Defense lawyers were asking Broward Circuit Judge Bernard Bober to hold the state to the unanimous standard that originally won Patrick a second chance at a life sentence instead of execution, but Bober never got to consider the question.
They also asked prosecutors to consider additional mitigating factors that were not presented at Patrick’s 2009 trial. Those factors included childhood abuse that Patrick suffered.
Patrick was a homeless man originally from Boca Raton who admitted to detectives that he hog-tied, beat, strangled and robbed Schumacher to death in Oakland Park. Schumacher was 72, while Patrick was 42.
Patrick told investigators that he beat and killed Schumacher because Schumacher made sexual advances. While Patrick said he was not gay, he admitted having sexual relationships with men to survive as a homeless man.
That admission led the Florida Supreme Court to conduct a hearing on whether Patrick’s lawyer failed to vet a juror who admitted he could not be fair to gay defendants. The juror was allowed to remain on the panel, and the lawyer, then-Assistant Public Defender George Reres, said the decision to keep him was deliberate, according to court records. The potential bias could have worked in Patrick’s favor if it was directed at the victim rather than the defendant.
Patrick’s conviction was allowed to stand, leaving the death penalty as the only outstanding legal question.
Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.