CHARLOTTE COUNTY, Fla. — A death row inmate convicted in the 2003 killings of a corrections officer and an inmate during an attempted escape from Charlotte Correctional Institution has been granted a new penalty-phase trial.
Dwight Eaglin, who is currently housed at Florida State Prison, has been granted a new penalty-phase trial, according to Gulf Coast News. Trial proceedings are scheduled to start in June.
Eaglin was already serving a life sentence for a 1998 murder when he and another inmate launched a failed escape from the Charlotte Correctional Institution in Punta Gorda. During that attempt, Eaglin fatally stabbed Corrections Officer Darla Lathrem and fellow inmate Charles Fuston. Lathrem, 38, was supervising a late-night maintenance crew when she was ambushed. She was the first female corrections officer in Florida to be killed in the line of duty, according to Officer Down Memorial Page.
Eaglin was sentenced to death in 2006 for the killings.
The new trial comes as Eaglin challenges Florida’s current death penalty law, which allows a death sentence if at least eight out of 12 jurors recommend it. This law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023, replaced the previous requirement of a unanimous jury decision — an issue Eaglin’s defense says should not apply retroactively to his case.
While the guilty verdict remains intact, the upcoming trial will give a new jury the task of deciding whether Eaglin will remain on death row or serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Following Officer Lathrem’s death, scrutiny fell on staffing policies at Florida prisons. A Herald-Tribune report noted she had been supervising five inmates alone during a nighttime construction detail.
Lathrem, who was 38 at the time of her death, was struck in the head with a sledgehammer by inmates during the escape attempt and left in a mop closet at Charlotte Correctional Institution. Her radio and keys were later found discarded in a prison toilet.
Lathrem was remembered by colleagues as a light in a dark world.
Eaglin’s retrial highlights ongoing legal ripples following changes to the state’s capital punishment framework. Florida is one of only a few states that does not require a unanimous jury for death sentences, a shift that has drawn legal challenges and national attention.
