The man convicted of the brutal 2010 stabbing of a Jacksonville woman has lost his latest bid to escape death row. On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the denial of David Kelsey Sparre’s second successive motion for postconviction relief, dismantling his claims that the jury, which sentenced him, was unconstitutionally selected.
Sparre was condemned to death for the murder of Tiara Pool, who was found in her apartment with roughly 90 stab wounds. While Sparre initially denied involvement, he eventually confessed to killing Pool with a knife found in her home and stealing a gaming system.
The killing gained national attention as the “Craigslist Killer” case.
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In this latest appeal, Sparre’s defense team attempted to leverage a 2021 unpublished report known as the “Gau Study.” The defense argued that this data proved the jury selection process in Duval County—specifically the “death qualification” of jurors and the use of peremptory strikes—violated Sparre’s rights under the Sixth and Eighth Amendments. Their central argument was that the final jury panel failed to represent a “fair cross-section” of the community.
Writing for the court, Justice Jamie Grosshans rejected those arguments on multiple fronts.
First, the high court ruled that the “Gau Study” did not qualify as newly discovered evidence that would excuse the late filing of the motion. The justices noted that the data regarding Duval County capital trials from 2010 to 2018 had been available for years, meaning Sparre’s legal team could have, and should have, raised these concerns much earlier.
Beyond the procedural issues, the court took the opportunity to clarify a specific point of constitutional law regarding jury composition.
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Sparre’s appeal hinged on the idea that his specific jury—the twelve people who heard his case—did not mirror the demographics of the community. The Supreme Court flatly rejected this premise. Citing decades of federal precedent, the opinion clarified that the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a “fair cross-section” applies only to the pool from which jurors are drawn, not the final “petit jury” that sits in the box.
“Put simply, this uniform body of case law is incompatible with Sparre’s Sixth Amendment claim,” Grosshans wrote.
The court also dismissed Sparre’s attempt to frame jury representativeness as an Eighth Amendment issue, noting that no case law supports such an interpretation.
With the affirmation of the lower court’s summary denial, Sparre remains under a sentence of death. The opinion was concurred by Chief Justice Muñiz and Justices Canady, Labarga, Couriel, Francis, and Sasso.
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