The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously upheld the conviction and death sentence of Donald James Smith, who raped and murdered 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinklle after kidnapping the girl from a Jacksonville Walmart in 2013.
The June 2013 murder of Cherish drew huge amounts of news coverage and public attention in Jacksonville, with a jury in 2018 finding Smith guilty and a judge sending him to Death Row.
In the appeal to the Supreme Court, Smith’s attorneys raised a series of issues, including that the trial should have been moved out of Duval County because of the heavy pretrial publicity.
Read the full story at News4Jax.com.
