Man Charged With Robbing Business Employee At Gunpoint
December 24, 2016
A man wanted for robbing an employee of a Pensacola business at gunpoint on Tuesday has been arrested.
Marsarius Savontae Evans, aka “T.T.”, 26, no permanent address, was arrested Friday afternoon at a residence in the 2400 block of North F Street. He was charged with armed robbery, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and aggravated assault.
The incident occurred around 6:45 a.m. Tuesday at the Smart Fill, 4306 N. Davis Highway.
The suspect entered the store, grabbed a 27-year-old female clerk by the arm, showed a gun, and demanded money. When the suspect couldn’t open the cash register, he took the employee’s wallet and left the store.
FDOT Suspends Road Construction For Christmas, New Year’s Holidays
December 24, 2016
The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has suspended highway construction projects on major roadways across Northwest Florida for the holidays. There will be no lane closures or other activities that impede traffic on state roads through Monday, January 2, 2017. All major roads will be open to normal traffic.
Although no construction closures are scheduled over the holiday, existing state highway work zones will remain in effect and drivers may encounter construction workers and reduced speed limits. Motorists are reminded to use caution while traveling through work zones around barricades and equipment.
FDOT is encouraging drivers to allow extra travel time and to use extra caution in existing work zones along state highways. Drivers are urged to make sure they buckle up, along with their passengers. FDOT and other safety agencies also ask drivers to obey speed limits, get adequate rest before traveling, avoid distractions and never drink and drive.
Drivers also are urged to be prepared for unscheduled highway closures due to accidents, disabled vehicles or other events. Motorists should be alert to changing weather conditions while traveling.
Santa Visits Camp Fire Kids
December 24, 2016
Santa Claus recently paid a very special visit to the Camp Fire USA Learning Center in Century to take some last minute Christmas wishes. Courtesy photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
UF/IFAS: Baking Blunders To Avoid
December 24, 2016
The way people get cooking advice has changed a lot over the years, due in no small part to the Internet, said Heidi Copeland, family and consumer sciences agent with the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension.
“Before the Internet, people often took to calling their local Extension office for culinary advice, especially during the frenzy of holiday cooking,” Copeland said. “Fortunately, people still come to family and consumer sciences agents like myself to get answers to their culinary questions.”
“Folks are frequently concerned about baking,” Copeland said. “Many often wonder why their product isn’t turning out.”
Copeland has these tips for avoiding common baking blunders:
1. Take care with substitutions. “Baking isn’t as forgiving as cooking. Using the right ingredients is important because they strongly affect the taste and texture of baked goods,” Copeland explained. “For example, if a recipe calls for butter, don’t substitute a spread. Typical butter is 80 percent fat and 20 percent water, whereas a spread can be as little as 60 percent fat and 40 percent water,” Copeland said. “That bit of extra liquid in something like a pie crust could mean the difference between something deliciously flakey and a soggy mess.”
2. Measure it right. “Your measuring tools —cups and spoons— and how you measure can impact the final product,” Copeland said. “Flour, for instance, should be fluffed up a little with a spoon, swooped into a measuring cup and leveled with a knife or other straight-edged utensil—not packed and pounded into a cup. Brown sugar, on the other hand, should be packed into a measuring cup.”
3. Know your dimensions. “A recipe will tell you which pan size to use. Keep in mind that the recipe is design to fill pans of particular dimensions. For examples, the volume of a nine-inch cake pan is six cups, but that of a 10-inch baking pan is 11 cups,” said Copeland.
4. Get the right flour. “Which flour is best? It depends on what you’re making,” Copeland said. “Whole grain flours are higher in dietary fiber and overall nutrient content than white flour, but whole grain flours are not the norm for most traditional holiday recipes, nor is self-rising flour, which already has baking powder and salt added. All-purpose flour is the key to most basic recipes.”
5. When it comes to eggs, go large. “Unless otherwise noted, assume a recipe with eggs is calling for large chicken eggs at room temperature,” Copeland advised. “If a cookie recipe calls for two large eggs (about four ounces) and two jumbo eggs (about five ounces) are used, the cookies may turn out softer than desired.”
Jay Art Dept. Presents The Elf Shop Painting Party
December 24, 2016
The Jay High School Art Department recently hosted their first-ever “The Elf Shop Painting Party”.
Nearly 30 adults were assisted by Jay art students throughout the event. The students decorated, prepped canvases and all supplies, creating the culinary art refreshments, and assisted the participants. The Royal Outfitter Store, owned and operated by Jay Art Department, created a goody jar for each participant with their personalized vinyl initial.
The Jay Art Department is planning another painting party called “Spring Into Art 2017“, with two sessions available on March 4 and March 11, 2017. For more information, contact Teresa Dobson, Jay Art Department, at (850) 675-4507 in early January.
For more photos from “The Elf Shop Painting Party”, click here.
Photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Fire Displaces Five From Their Home, Adds Red Bulb To Safety Wreath
December 23, 2016
Five people — three adults and two children — were left without their home following Thursday night fire.
The fire was reported just after 7 p.m. on Rawlings Drive at Greenbriar Boulevard. The fire was brought under control in about 30 minutes. A clothes dryer in the laundry room was confirmed as the source of the fire, with flames spreading to the kitchen and smoke damage throughout the home. Damage was estimated at $50,000.
The American Red Cross was providing temporary assistance to the displaced residents.
The fire represented the eighth red bulb on the “Keep the Wreath Green” fire safety campaign wreath.
A seventh red bulb was added after a structure fire with entrapment on Wednesday at 9:15 p.m. on Horn Street. Crews arrived on scene to find a working fire of a 10 x 10 foot shed that was utilized as a home. The fire was called under control at 9:48 p.m., with the shed a total loss and the resident sustaining critical injuries requiring transport to Scared Heart. The State Marshal is investigating the cause of the fire.
The “Keep the Wreath Green” fire safety campaign is a collaborative initiative with the city of Pensacola to promote fire safety during the month of December.
During the month-long campaign, five-foot wreaths are on display at 18 county fire stations and five city fire stations, with wreaths also placed outside Escambia County’s Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building downtown, the Escambia County Public Safety Building, Pensacola City Hall and Cordova Mall near the food court entrance. Each time firefighters respond to a residential fire with damage, a green light bulb will be replaced with a red one to remind citizens of the dangers posed by fires in residential home.
Photos by Kristi Barbour for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
ECUA Christmas Trash Pickup Schedule
December 23, 2016
ECUA offices will be closed Friday, December 23 and Monday, December 26, in observance of the Christmas holiday, and on Monday, January 2, 2017, in observance of the New Year’s holiday.
There are no changes to the ECUA sanitation collection schedules in Escambia or Santa Rosa counties (garbage, recycling and yard trash).
Customers may place real wreaths and Christmas trees, free of stands and decorations, at the curb for pick-up with regular yard waste collection. Call ECUA customer service at (850) 476-0480 for additional information.
Drought Continues For Some In North Escambia
December 23, 2016
Despite recently rainfall that has greatly reduced the risk of wildfires and returned moisture to the ground, the latest information released Thursday shows that a portion of the North Escambia area is still in a drought.
The update from the National Drought Mitigation Center shows the northernmost part of Escambia County in Florida, roughly from Walnut Hill north, in a moderate drought. The southern half of Escambia County in Alabama is also in a moderate drought, while the northern half of that county is still in a severe drought.
The southern half of Escambia County in Florida remains abnormally dry.
There are only slight chances of rain in our near-term forecast.
Molino Vehicle Fire Destroys Pickup Truck
December 23, 2016
A vehicle fire destroyed a pickup in Molino Thursday morning. There were no injuries reported in the Nancy Lane blaze. NorthEscambia.com photos by Kristi Barbour, click to enlarge.
Supreme Court Opens Door To New Death Penalty Hearings
December 23, 2016
In a pair of major rulings about the state’s embattled death penalty, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for about half of the state’s Death Row inmates to seek new sentencing proceedings based on a seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision early this year.
But while the Florida justices granted relief for approximately 55 percent of the state’s 386 condemned inmates, a majority of the court also lifted a stay of execution in the case of James Asay — a signal that deaths by lethal injections could soon be back on track after a year-long hiatus.
Thursday’s highly anticipated opinions focused on the application of a January U.S. Supreme Court decision, in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, that struck down as unconstitutional the state’s death penalty sentencing system.
That ruling, premised on a 2002 case known as Ring v. Arizona, found that Florida’s system of allowing judges, instead of juries, to find the facts necessary to impose the death penalty was an unconstitutional violation of the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.
Florida lawmakers hurriedly rewrote the law this year after the Hurst ruling, requiring jurors to unanimously find that at least one aggravating factor exists before a defendant can be eligible for a death sentence and requiring at least 10 jurors to recommend death for the sentence to be imposed.
But the Florida Supreme Court in October struck down part of the new law, finding that it was unconstitutional because it did not require unanimous jury recommendations for death sentences.
In one of Thursday’s rulings, a majority of the Florida court decided that the Hurst ruling should apply to all cases that came after the Ring decision. It noted that 14 years separated those two U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
“In this instance … the interests of finality must yield to fundamental fairness,” the majority wrote in the case of John Mosley, convicted of murdering his girlfriend and their infant child in 2004. “Because Florida’s capital sentencing statute has essentially been unconstitutional since Ring in 2002, fairness strongly favors applying Hurst, retroactively to that time.”
The Mosley decision also makes clear that, because the court will analyze each case individually, not all capital defendants who are eligible under Hurst will ultimately receive the opportunity for a new sentence. Defendants who waived their right to a jury trial would also not be eligible for new sentencing hearings.
Retroactive application of the Hurst ruling is critical “to prevent a violation of the fundamental and critically important right to a trial by jury,” the majority wrote in Thursday’s 83-page Mosley opinion.
But Justice Charles Canady, in a dissent joined by Justice Ricky Polston, warned about the effects on the court system of allowing new sentencing hearings in death-penalty cases going back to the Ring ruling in 2002.
“The difficulties involved in conducting new penalty phase proceedings for such a large number of cases involving murders committed over such an extended period of time truly beggars description,” Canady wrote. “The impact on the system of justice — courts, prosecutors, and public defenders — will be enormous.”
In Asay’s case, the court ruled that Hurst should not apply retroactively to cases finalized before the Ring decision because, in part, of the impact on the administration of justice.
“Penalty phase resentencing is a time-intensive proceeding that requires significant preparation and discovery, death-qualifying a jury, and generally, a multi-day trial,” the majority wrote. “While some of the prior witnesses’ statements could be admitted based on the transcripts from the prior sentencing, the jury’s ability to weigh the strength of those witnesses would clearly be impacted. Finally there is an important consideration regarding the impact a new sentencing proceeding would have on the victims’ families and their need for finality.”
All but two of the justices — Canady and Peggy Quince — authored separate opinions in the Asay case. Justices Barbara Pariente and James E.C. Perry concurred in part but offered dissenting opinions in which they said that all of the state’s Death Row inmates — including those in cases before Ring — should be eligible for resentencing.
Justice R. Fred Lewis concurred in the result but wrote that the Hurst ruling should be extended retroactively to all capital defendants who raised the issue of unanimity, even before Ring was decided.
In her dissenting opinion, Pariente objected that “the requirement of jury unanimity in the ultimate decision as to whether a defendant is sentenced to death is of such fundamental significance that fairness requires” retroactive application.
“The majority’s conclusion results in an unintended arbitrariness as to who receives relief depending on when the defendant was sentenced or, in some cases, resentenced,” she wrote. “To avoid such arbitrariness and to ensure uniformity and fundamental fairness in Florida’s capital sentencing, our opinion in Hurst should be applied retroactively to all death sentences.”
Perry went even further.
“The line drawn by the majority is arbitrary and cannot withstand scrutiny under the Eighth Amendment because it creates an arbitrary application of law to two groups of similarly situated persons,” Perry, who is forced to retire at the end of this year, wrote. “Coupled with Florida’s troubled history in applying the death penalty in a discriminatory manner, I believe that such an application is unconstitutional.”
Attorney Martin McClain, who took over Asay’s case in January after Gov. Rick Scott signed a death warrant ordering Asay’s execution, said the court’s opinion in his client’s case leaves unanswered questions. Thursday’s ruling came 10 months after the court heard arguments in the Asay’s case.
“Obviously, the issue is complex, as is reflected in the opinions,” McClain told The News Service of Florida. “All that’s really established today is that post-Ring people have a better argument for relief than pre-Ring people.”
Scott spokeswoman Jackie Schutz said the governor’s office is “reviewing the ruling.” But, according to McClain, Scott cannot reschedule an execution date for the convicted killer because the court’s ruling Thursday left open the possibility of a request for a rehearing.
Thursday’s decisions evoked mixed reactions from defense lawyers, with many of them echoing Perry’s concerns.
“Certainly, a fair number of my clients will be entitled to relief. However, the court’s opinions do really raise an arbitrary concern that similarly situated defendants are being treated differently under the law. That’s unfair and a violation of the Eighth Amendment,” lawyer Maria DeLiberato said.
Karen Gottlieb, co-director of the Florida Center for Capital Representation at Florida International University’s College of Law, predicted that the decisions regarding retroactivity will spur more litigation.
“The defendants whose cases were final prior to Ring, their sentencing proceedings were no less unconstitutional than those sentencing proceedings that were not final at the time of Ring and those that came after Ring,” Gottlieb said. “The bottom line is we are talking about unconstitutional sentencing proceedings, no less unconstitutional prior to Ring than post-Ring. They were always unconstitutional.”
by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida