Former death row inmate serving life for Pensacola woman's murder dies in prison
A man serving life in a Florida prison for beating and stabbing a Pensacola woman to death in 2001 died in prison Thursday, Florida's Department of Corrections told the News Journal.
Willie James Hodges, 63, was serving a life sentence for murdering Patricia Belanger in her Mayfair home Dec. 19, 2001. Hodges was initially sentence to death but later had his sentence overturned.
FDOC confirmed Hodges died in its custody March 21 and said the department would release a cause and manner of death once the medical examiner concludes the autopsy and subsequent report.
Belanger was found in her home by family members, bludgeoned and stabbed to death. Her family members had arrived to pick her up for a holiday trip.
Escambia County Sheriff's deputies tied Hodges to the case after they found matching fingerprints at the crime scene and Hodges' blood found on a sock.
After his initial conviction, Hodges filed an appeal saying he was convicted due to ineffective legal representation. The Supreme Court dismissed those claims, but in a 4-3 opinion found Hodges was penalized under faulty Florida law allowing a majority of jurors, as opposed to all jurors, to impose the death penalty.
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The court vacated Hodges' death penalty sentence and remanded the case back to trial court for a new jury after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state's capital punishment system based on another Pensacola murder case, (Timothy) Hurst v. Florida in 2016.
A legislative rewrite of the law allowing a 10-2 majority of jurors to impose death failed to pass muster with the Florida Supreme Court, which demanded a unanimous jury finding. Legislators rewrote the statute to address unanimity, and then-Gov. Rick Scott signed a new capital sentencing scheme into law.
During a second penalty phase, court records show Hodges was resentenced to life in prison without parole in 2021, 20 years after Belanger's death.
Florida's death penalty law changed once again in 2023 after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that allows juries to recommend a death sentence with as little as an 8-4 vote rather than a unanimous vote.
The bill received some bipartisan support from Florida lawmakers and some families of the victims of the Parkland shooting, who felt that the man who killed 17 people at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 got off too easy after a Broward County jury rejected the death penalty months before.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Florida ex death row inmate Willie Hodges dies in prison
