Bessman Okafor's attorney said on Thursday he will be trying to get his client off death row using the Supreme Court decision on the death penalty.
"We're going to definitely include it in there. Definitely. We couldn't ignore it," said Dean Mosley, Okafor's attorney.
Okafor was sentenced to death for the execution-style shooting death of Alex Zaldivar, 19, in 2012.
Zaldivar was set to testify against Okafor in a separate home invasion case.
Thursday, prosecutors and Okafor's defense attorney gathered for a hearing at the Orange County Courthouse, where they began tracking transcripts and evidence in the case. They're getting them ready to send to the Florida Supreme Court for Okafor's first appeal.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the court procedures used to sentence defendants to death was unconstitutional.
Justices ruled judges had too much power in the decision, and juries didn't have enough power.
Outside the Orange County Courthouse Thursday, State Attorney Jeff Ashton took questions for the first time surrounding Okafor's case as it pertains to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
He said Okafor's case won't be affected by the ruling.
"The United States Supreme Court has had the opportunity to stay executions of a number of individuals who were similarly situated with Mr. Okafor," he said. "That is they had prior convictions, and so on, and they chose to let those executions go forward."
His comments come as lawmakers in Tallahassee craft new laws regarding how the death sentence is handed down by a jury.
House Bill 157 and Senate Bill 330 both would require a jury's unanimous vote on the death penalty.
They would also require unanimous votes by the jury on aggravating factors, such as a defendant's lack of remorse, the violence of the crime or if a child witnessed the crime.
"I think Florida is coming to the reality of this late, but thank God they're coming to the reality that it should be unanimous," said Mosley.
Ashton said he's not in favor of the bill.
"That particular bill, I think, is honestly a death penalty killer bill. Its intention is to make the death penalty almost impossible to obtain," Ashton said.
