GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Othal Wallace was in the parking lot of his girlfriend’s apartment complex, one foot out the car door, when Daytona Beach Police Officer Jason Raynor approached him.
“Do you live here?” Raynor asked as Wallace stood up out of the car. Raynor put a hand on his shoulder.
There were some further exchanges then a scuffle. Raynor fell back. Wallace was driven away to Georgia, where he hid from police in a treehouse.
That was in June 2021. Just over two months later, Wallace was in a Clay County courthouse facing charges of first-degree murder of a police officer with a firearm. The jury could have considered the death penalty, but it found Wallace guilty of a lesser charge: manslaughter. He was sentenced to 30 years and will serve 27 of them.
Now the Legislature has passed a bill that would mandate life in prison without parole for anyone convicted of manslaughter of a law enforcement officer. The Senate passed the bill 31-4 in late January. The House passed its version Wednesday 103-8. It still needs to be signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
This is the third time this bill, the Officer Jason Raynor Act, has been proposed. This year, it’s proposed in the Senate by Tom Leek, R-St. Augustine, and in the House by Jessica Baker, R-Jacksonville.
Legislators have raised the same concerns with the measures each year, that they create a harsh, mandatory sentence for a crime resulting in an accidental death. Baker said Wednesday the bill’s life sentence provision would not include cases where a reckless or drunken driver caused the accidental death of an officer.
The bill also removes language specifying that an officer is not justified in using force during an arrest if the arrest is unlawful.
“What message are we sending to law enforcement by removing this provision that says they are not justified in the use of force if they know what they are doing is unlawful?” asked Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando. He voted against the bill three times this session.
Smith voiced concerns about a mandatory life in prison sentence for manslaughter, an unintentional death. He said the bill removes discretion from judges in sentencing the cases they hear.
“Life in prison for an accident, even one that a person is criminally culpable in causing, is extreme,” Smith said. “I think it's wrong to take away the ability for a judge to weigh mitigating factors in a case and just mandate a life sentence for someone.”
Sens. Lori Berman, D-Palm Beach; LaVon Bracy Davis, D-Orlando; and Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, also voted no.
The bill removes language added to Florida law decades ago to protect citizens against officers who are knowingly using unlawful excessive force. Removing it has nothing to do with Raynor, the officer killed in Daytona Beach, said Aaron Wayt, president-elect of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Wayt spoke at the Senate and House hearings.
Prosecutors already had a different legal path to sentence Wallace to life in prison. Under a 2002 law created for Officer Scott Baird of Gainesville, the usual charge for manslaughter – 15 years – doubles to 30 years if the victim is a law enforcement officer. Another law requires a sentence of 25 years to life if the discharge of a firearm or destructive device results in "great bodily harm" or death to another person.
Wayt said the bill blurs the line between an intentional, planned murder of an officer and a reckless, accidental death.
“Let that judge in that courtroom decide how much time that person deserves,” he said. “We don't need to take discretion out of the hands of all judges in all future cases.”
Sen. Shevrin “Shev” Jones, D-Miami Gardens, who voiced concerns in a heated committee hearing in 2025, said he’s confident in voting yes this year. There are remaining problems with the bill, he said, and he’s almost sure the Senate will have to re-legislate.
“Ambiguity just doesn't do well, especially in this space we're talking about,” Jones said. “We need to be as sure as possible of what we're legislating. Someone's life could be really upended if not handled carefully.”
Smith cited the case of Virgilio Aguilar Mendez in St. Johns County.
Mendez, 19 at the time, was charged and held for two years for manslaughter of a police officer because the officer who arrested him had a heart attack shortly after the arrest and died. The charges were ultimately dropped alongside public pressure, but if Mendez were convicted under this bill, Smith said, he would have served life in prison.
Tim Pribisco, Wallace’s lawyer in the 2021 case, calls the situation “the ultimate tragedy.”
Wallace had posted insensitive remarks about violence toward police officers on social media. He was affiliated with people who were open about their distaste with policing in Black communities, Pribisco said, especially in 2021, after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“There’s this conflict between police and the community,” he said. “How do the reverberations of everything going on in the community affect the way that police officers interact with people?”
Pribisco said the bill undermines public trust and perception of officers in communities that already have heavy interactions with police officers.
Baker, the House bill’s sponsor, said the measure reaffirms “any concerns about a stop, arrest or detention must be addressed in a courtroom, not through violence on the street.”
Smith said, that's not always how things play out.
“If someone has a boot on their neck and can't breathe, they won't have the opportunity to fight back in court,” he said.
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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at zherukhamarta@ufl.edu. You can donate to support our students here.