FORT PIERCE — Just minutes before Circuit Judge Robert Belanger began Andrew Michael Gosciminski’s sentencing hearing Friday, six women walked into the courtroom and sat together.

Since September, the former strangers have endured a grueling jury selection process, listened to gory details about the 2002 murder of Joan Loughman and cried along with Loughman’s family in court as they described their heartache.

They became part of the jury that recommended last month that Gosciminski die for the crime. And on Friday, they became part of the audience that watched Belanger follow their recommendation and sentence Gosciminski to Death Row for the killing — for the second time.

“I’ve never had this happen before,” Assistant State Attorney Lynn Park said of the jurors’ presence. “Three others said they wanted to come but couldn’t make it.”

Belanger said testimony about Gosciminski’s military service and mental health problems failed to outweigh the cruelty and cold planning that justified a death sentence.

Gosciminski, who won a new trial last year after the Florida Supreme Court overturned his original death sentence, never looked at the jurors during the short hearing.

Assistant Public Defender Mark Harllee said he and Gosciminski had expected Belanger to follow the jury’s recommendation, although the judge could have sentenced him to life in prison. Harllee said Gosciminski, who maintains his innocence, plans a vigorous appeal again.
Park and Assistant State Attorney Chris Taylor said Gosciminksi killed Loughman to steal her jewelry after the two met at an assisted living facility where Loughman had placed her father.
Loughman was beaten and stabbed to death on the morning before she was scheduled to return to her native Connecticut. Gosciminski’s girlfriend at the time said she saw him washing himself of blood shortly after the murder, and that later that day he gave her a 2-carat diamond ring believed to be Loughman’s.
If Gosciminski’s new appeal prevails, he’ll join a small group of Death Row inmates from the Treasure Coast whose cases have volleyed back and forth between circuit and appellate courts for years.
Alphonso Cave, one of several men convicted in the 1982 Stuart murder of Frances Slater, was sentenced to death the same year, but received the same sentence again in 1993 and 1997 after winning appeals. James Morgan stood trial four times for killing an elderly woman in the late 1970s before he escaped Death Row with a life sentence in the 1990s.
Loughman’s daughter Karen Stillman, who was in court Friday, said she hopes she and her family won’t have to sit through yet another trial.
“Last time I really thought it was final,” she said. “This time I’m taking it one day at a time.”
For now, Stillman said, she’ll try to leave the case behind her except for memories of kindness from prosecutors and the jurors, whom she hugged before leaving the courthouse.
The jurors in the courtroom Friday said the experience has forever changed their lives. One of the women broke down in tears again as she remembered the penalty-phase testimony from Stillman, who was pregnant when her mother was murdered. Stillman testified she never had a chance to tell her mother she was having a girl.
“I just felt so deeply sorry,” said one juror, who declined to give her name. “It was both a deeply disturbing and deeply interesting experience, but it’s good to see the justice system work.”

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