Featured Image Credit: Florida Department of Corrections
Topics: Florida, US News, Mental Health, Crime, True crime
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Florida, US News, Mental Health, Crime, True crime
An ex-Army elite Ranger was executed in Florida after being found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder with a firearm.
On May 2, Jeffrey Hutchinson was put to death by lethal injection at Florida State Prison at around 8.00pm.
The 62-year-old ex-army veteran - who served for eight years - was executed after being found guilty of the 1998 murder of his girlfriend Renee Flaherty and her three young children, nine-year-old Geoffrey, seven-year-old Amanda, and four-year-old Logan.
Hutchinson's legal team tried to appeal the ruling, arguing the veteran's experiences in the Gulf War had triggered severe mental health problems, however, the US Supreme Court rejected the final appeal without comment.
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On the night of September 11, 1998, Hutchinson and Flaherty argued, as detailed by court documents.
Hutchinson then left, packing clothes and guns and heading to a bar where he drank 'one-and-a-half glasses of beer,' told a bartender he was 'p*ssed off' with his partner and then left.
Around 40 minutes after Hutchinson left the bar, authorities received a 911 call from his home.
The caller said they'd 'shot [their] family' and two of Hutchinson's close friends identified the caller's voice as his.
Hutchinson also said on the phone call: "There were some guys here."
When authorities arrived at the scene 10 minutes later, they found Flaherty dead in a bed in the master bedroom, alongside the children too.
Hutchinson is reported as having been found in the garage with a phone nearby 'still connected to the 911 operator'.
He was also found with gunshot residue on his hands - a Mossberg 12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun found on the kitchen corner.
Nevertheless, Hutchinson said he was innocent.
Hutchinson's defense argued he was innocent and that two men came into the house and fatally shot Flaherty and the children before fleeing.
As well as this, they presented the defense of intoxication and argued it wasn't first-degree murder but a crime of passion, while the defense also drew on Hutchinson's diagnosis of Gulf War syndrome and attention deficit disorder (ADD).
However, the 2001 trial resulted in him being found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder with a firearm.
He was sentenced to life for the murder of Flaherty and received three death sentences for the murder of the three children.
Hutchinson's defence launched multiple appeals using reasons from accusing the counsel of being ineffective for 'failing to present evidence' to arguing the State of Florida had 'made a tragic mistake sending an innocent man to death row for a crime he did not commit'.
Ultimately, all were rejected and Hutchinson was put to death via lethal injection - becoming the fourth person to be executed in Florida this year and the 16th person to be put to death in the US so far this year.
Hutchinson has no final words before his death.