Alvin Tumblin is shown during opening statements in his first-degree murder, death penalty trial in January of 2007.

FORT PIERCE — The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a new trial for convicted murderer Alwin Tumblin and threw out the death sentence he received for the 2004 shooting death of Fort Pierce auto shop owner Jimmy Johns.

In a 25-page order, the high court ruled that in June 2007 Tumblin was denied a fair trial when a judge improperly allowed St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Lt. Dennis Smith to testify about the truthfulness of a state witness.

The jury that convicted Tumblin in June 2007 voted 12-0 to recommend he be put to death, the punishment imposed by Circuit Judge James McCann.

This was the 31-year-old Tumblin’s second trial for Johns’ murder, after a mistrial occurred during his first trial six months earlier. Then, a judge stopped the trial when it was revealed detectives had not turned over audio and video recordings and had destroyed tapes of jail conversations between Tumblin and others.

Victim Jimmy Johns.

Chief Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl said Thursday prosecutors will try Tumblin a third time.

“We absolutely will retry the case, without question,” Bakkedahl said. “This is an individual who certainly must be retried.”

Johns, owner of Jimmy’s Auto Clinic in Fort Pierce, was found dead May 24, 2004, by mechanics returning from lunch. He had been shot in the head at close range.

Witnesses testified Tumblin possessed the gun used in the killing.

The weapon and ammunition were found shortly after the murder in Tumblin’s home.

In Thursday’s reversal, the state Supreme Court’s ruling reflected arguments made before it last year when Tumblin’s court-appointed attorney argued that during his second trial, prosecutors offered no physical analysis to link him to Johns’ murder during a botched robbery attempt at his Okeechobee Road business.

Tumblin’s attorney argued that to gain a conviction, the state relied on the testimony of three witnesses, including Tumblin’s accused accomplice Anthony Mayes, and that Smith during the trial inappropriately bolstered Mayes’ credibility.

Mayes was the only witness to testify that Tumblin said he was going to kill Johns.

“Because Lt. Smith improperly volunteered testimony that essentially vouched for Mayes’ credibility in a manner that tied his credibility both to the version of events Mayes gave to officers prior to trial, and to the same version of events he gave to the jury during trial,” the justices wrote, “we conclude that Tumblin did not receive a fair trial.”

Tumblin’s former defense lawyer Rusty Akins, who with attorney Jeffrey Smith represented him during both trials, said the reversal was expected.

“I am absolutely not surprised with the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Akins said, recalling arguments made at the time seeking a mistrial following Smith’s testimony.

Bakkedahl meanwhile, expressed sympathy for Johns’ family members.

“They’ve had to go through a tremendous ordeal, from the original mistrial, through the trial and now they have to deal with this,” Bakkedahl said. “Unfortunately ,I think it’s a sad indictment of the system. It seems like there’s no finality, but we won’t give up and we will do this again.”

For more on this topic, read Dara Kam’s blog post, Supreme Court throws out Ft. Pierce death sentence, orders new trial

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Community events, Port St. Lucie, Stuart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.