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In 2002, Carter’s ex-girlfriend Reed, her 16-year-old daughter Courtney Smith, and her new boyfriend, Pafford, were shot and killed in their Arlington home.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Jacksonville man who murdered three people in 2002 was sentenced to death again inside a Duval County courtroom Friday afternoon.
On Aug. 22, 2024, a jury recommended the death penalty for 70-year-old Pinkney Carter for the murders of Glen Pafford and Elizabeth Reed by a 10-2 vote and 9-3 vote, respectively. In Florida, the threshold for the death penalty is eight votes.
You have not only forfeited your right to live among us but under the laws of the state of Florida — you have forfeited your right to live at all. It is therefore ordered,” Judge Mark Borello said, in delivering the sentence.
When a jury weighed Carter’s life in 2005, they recommended death and Carter was put on death row in his early 50s.
Carter was resentenced due to Florida’s ever-changing law relating to “death penalty procedures.” The threshold to sentence someone to death in Florida used to be unanimous.
In 2002, Carter’s ex-girlfriend Reed, her 16-year-old daughter Courtney Smith, and her new boyfriend, Pafford, were shot and killed in their Arlington home. Prosecutors said Carter escaped to Mexico after the murders, but was later caught in Kentucky and brought back to Jacksonville in 2004.
“With him getting the death penalty not once but twice just kind of proves that’s truly what he deserved,” Becca Reed, Reed’s daughter and Smith’s sister, told First Coast News after a jury recommended death for Carter in August.
Prosecutors argued during the penalty phase of Carter’s second death penalty trial that Carter murdered Reed, Smith and Pafford because he felt rejected by Reed after she broke off their relationship. They said Carter took the time to go retrieve and load his gun, then snuck through the back of Reed’s house.
Defense attorneys claimed Carter did not plan to kill Reed and the others, but that he went to Reed’s home to confront her about breaking off their relationship. His defense argued Carter was traumatized from an abusive father growing up and was under the influence of alcohol and an antidepressant at the time of the murders.
“I have no words left there for him,” said Becca Reed about Carter. “He took something from our family that we’ll never be able to get back. He took our sister and our mother and ended another person’s life for no reason, so there’s really just no forgiveness for that.”