© Times, Florida Department of Corrections/Tampa Bay Times/TNS James Dailey, 73, faces the death penalty for the 1985 murder of 14-year-old Shelly Boggio. Left: Dailey at his 1987 trial, where he was convicted and sentenced to death. Middle: Dailey in 1993, when he was again sentenced to die. Right: The most current photo of Dailey on Florida's Death Row.

In the case of James Dailey, who faces execution for a 1985 Pinellas County murder, the defense hitched its hopes for a reprieve to Jack Pearcy, his co-defendant serving a life sentence.

Pearcy signed a declaration in December that said Dailey had nothing to do with the murder of 14-year-old Shelly Boggio — and that Pearcy alone committed the crime.

Both men are set to appear at a court hearing Thursday. But now comes a new complication: Pearcy has recanted his apparent confession.

In a three-hour deposition last week at the state prison where he resides, Pearcy said the truth is what he told investigators back in June 1985: that Dailey killed Boggio.

He professed his own innocence, accused the original investigators of lying and claimed his previous confessions were an effort to keep Dailey’s case going.

"I didn’t want to see him get killed,” Pearcy said. “One person was already dead because of the crime. I didn’t want to see that happen. I wasn’t happy with him, but I still didn’t want the state to kill him.”

A transcript of Pearcy’s testimony was filed in court last week. In it, Pearcy said he will refuse to testify at the upcoming hearing.

In subsequent court documents, Dailey’s defense suggested that the state interfered with Pearcy’s testimony.

At the beginning of the deposition, a prosecutor warned Pearcy that he could be charged with perjury if he made inconsistent statements.

“They are purposely trying to block the truth from coming out,” said Dailey’s lead defense attorney, Josh Dubin.

The defense has asked a judge to order the state not to interfere with Pearcy’s testimony. They’ve also asked for public records of any communications the state has had with Pearcy’s mother, whom prosecutors have listed as a witness.

In separate trials, Dailey and Pearcy were both found guilty of Boggio’s murder. A bridge tender spotted the girl’s body one morning in May 1985 floating in the Intracoastal Waterway in Indian Rocks Beach. She had been beaten, choked, stabbed more than 30 times and ultimately drowned.

The two men were among the last people seen with her the night before. Evidence suggested the motive was sexual.

When Pearcy was later arrested in his native Kansas, he implicated Dailey. He later gave a vivid description of the crime to prosecutors and detectives, but claimed it was Dailey who did the stabbing.

Neither man testified against the other. But while Pearcy was given a life sentence, a jury unanimously recommended death for Dailey.

Pearcy’s story has changed repeatedly over the years. In 1993, he told Dailey’s defense that his original account was made up, an effort to shift the blame away from himself.

Five years later, he wrote a letter to Boggio’s twin sister and stuck to the story that Dailey stabbed her.

“When I saw what Dailey had done, I just got violently sick," he wrote. “I’ve wished I’d killed him so many times, I wouldn’t be upset at being here if I had.”

Other prisoners have claimed that Pearcy told them Dailey wasn’t involved. In 2017, Pearcy signed the first of two statements saying Dailey wasn’t there that night. But when called to testify, he invoked the Fifth Amendment.

Dailey has maintained that he was home in his bedroom when the murder occurred.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Dailey’s death warrant in September, setting his execution for November. A federal judge in October granted a temporary stay of execution. That expired Dec. 30.

Since then, no new execution date has been set.

In the recent deposition, Pearcy denied having anything to do with the stabbing. He denied ever telling investigators that he had nightmares in which he saw his own face on a man who was stabbing a young girl.

He said that Dailey’s attorneys typed out the previous two statements he signed. He signed them, he said, so Dailey’s lawyers would keep investigating the case. His hope, he said, was that they might discover new evidence that he could then use to launch a new appeal for himself.

“I had no advocacy,” he said. “He had numerous people ... attorneys digging into everything and investigators and stuff. So I did that to keep him alive because if the state killed James Dailey, then it all goes away. Then I have ... no hope whatsoever.”

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