TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Attorneys for Bryan Frederick Jennings, a 66-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran, have filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court, asking the Court to review the circumstances surrounding the issuance of his death warrant and Florida’s failure to ensure continuous legal representation for people sentenced to death.
The petition argues that Governor Ron DeSantis and state officials violated well-established state and federal principles by signing Mr. Jennings’ death warrant while he had no state-appointed postconviction counsel — a direct violation of Florida law requiring continuous representation for all death-sentenced prisoners.
An Arbitrary and Politicized Execution
According to the petition, Mr. Jennings’ death warrant was issued abruptly and without the individualized review that due process requires. The petition asserts that Florida’s current warrant-selection system allows executions to proceed in a manner that is inconsistent, politically influenced, and lacking in meaningful standards — leaving condemned prisoners without any clear avenue to ensure equal treatment under the law. Mr. Jennings’ case, which has not been reviewed for clemency by any Florida governor or clemency board in more than 35 years, was suddenly chosen despite his lack of counsel and without any transparent criteria or review process.
Previous federal filings alleged that a political opportunity was the cause of the sudden warrant. On October 9, 2025, Florida officials were publicly engaging in a national media controversy involving a separate murder case in Kentucky. Several news outlets reported on the case of Ronald Exantus, a man who had been found not guilty by reason of insanity for the murder of a six-year-old child. He was convicted of assault charges against other members of the child’s family and sentenced to prison. After his release on October 1, 2025, Exantus moved to Florida to serve his reentry supervision period. Just over a week later, he was arrested for failing to register as a convicted felon within the first 48 hours of his entering the state, sparking outrage among conservative commentators that accused Kentucky officials of being “soft on crime.”
That same day, Florida officials willingly and publicly amplified the outrage. The Florida Department of Corrections’ official X (Twitter) account went so far as to offer their three drug execution cocktail to Kentucky, posting that “[i]n Florida, convicted child killers won’t see the light of day. We have a three drug cocktail that Kentucky is free to borrow to finish the job.” Governor DeSantis posted that it was “[u]nbelievable that this scum bag was let out of prison in Kentucky after serving a mere fraction of his sentence for murdering a six-year-old. Don’t mess with the Free State of Florida.”
Less than twenty-four hours later, on October 10, Governor DeSantis signed Mr. Jennings’ death warrant. Mr. Jennings was sentenced to death for the 1979 murder of six-year-old Rebecca Kunash. Jennings’ counsel has previously described the decision as “seemingly out of the blue,” following directly on the heels of that political firestorm.
These public communications, combined with the sudden issuance of the warrant, demonstrate a retaliatory use of executive power and a deliberate attempt to reinforce a political narrative about toughness on crime — rather than the careful, constitutional review that justice demands.
Florida’s Neglect of Counsel and Clemency Obligations
Supporting the retaliatory nature of the signing, the petition points out that Mr. Jennings has not had a clemency hearing since 1988. Every person executed under Governor DeSantis to date has at least had a clemency hearing in this century. No governor since 1988, including Governor DeSantis, has formally reviewed Mr. Jennings’ case for clemency, which would include evidence of his growth and redemption in the intervening 37 years.
The Jennings warrant also signified a disturbing trend as Mr. Jennings was the second person in a row (Norman Grim was also without state court counsel) to have a warrant signed while he lacked state-appointed counsel. Mr. Jennings had been without state counsel for more than three years after his previous lawyer died in 2022 — a direct violation of Florida law requiring continuous representation for death-sentenced individuals.
Capital Collateral Regional Counsel for the Middle Region (CCRC-M) was appointed only after the warrant was signed. CCRC-M immediately objected, stating that the agency had no knowledge of Mr. Jennings or his case and could not ethically provide competent representation on a 30-day warrant schedule, calling the appointment “the functional equivalent of having no counsel at all.”
Constitutional Questions Before the Court
The petition asks the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Florida’s capital postconviction scheme — which promises counsel but provides no remedy when the State fails to comply — violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.
It further argues that allowing the Governor to sign execution warrants for unrepresented prisoners transforms what should be a neutral exercise of clemency and judicial review into an arbitrary process that deprives people of basic constitutional protections.
Mr. Jennings asks the Court to stay his execution.
“Florida’s death penalty system has become unrecognizable from the one the law promises,” said Maria DeLiberato, Legal and Policy Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “Bryan Jennings was left without a state court lawyer for years, denied a clemency review in this century, and then selected for execution because of favorable political timing.”
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FADP is a Florida-based, statewide organization of individuals and groups working together to end the death penalty in Florida. Our network includes dozens of state and local groups and thousands of individual Floridians, including murder victims’ family members and other survivors of violent crime, law enforcement professionals, families of the incarcerated, and death row exonerees.