Michael Woodbury killed three men in Conway, New Hampshire, on July 2, 2007. The dead were James Walker, 34, of Denmark, Maine, and two visitors from Massachusetts, William Jones, 25, and Gary Jones, 23. Woodbury was 31 and had been out of a Maine sentence for about two months. On August 17, 2007, in Merrimack County Superior Court, he pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and received consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole.
That sentence settled the New Hampshire case. By 2009 Woodbury was serving the sentences in Florida. On September 22, 2017, he killed a fellow inmate, Antoneeze Haynes, in Okeechobee County. He represented himself, pleaded guilty to first-degree premeditated murder on the second day of his trial in May 2018, and was sentenced to death on September 21, 2018. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence on April 15, 2021, and further challenges have followed.
Woodbury was 31 in the summer of 2007, which places his birth in about 1975 or 1976. He was described at the time as a man from Windham, Maine. He served a Florida sentence for bank robbery from 1996 to 2002, and in Maine he served five years for robbery and theft. He was released from a Maine state prison on May 4, 2007, after serving the full term.
Woodbury had a history of mental illness that included bipolar disorder. After his release, in comments made at the time of his plea, he said he had warned corrections officials that he was a danger to others and needed medication. Maine authorities answered that he had access to mental health services while in custody but that, because he was not on probation, they had no jurisdiction over him once he left. His lawyer in New Hampshire said Woodbury rejected any defense built on his mental illness.
About a month after his release he left Maine.
The three men who died in Conway on July 2, 2007 had little in common beyond the town. James Walker, 34, lived in Denmark, Maine. William Jones, 25, came from Walpole, Massachusetts, and Gary Jones, 23, from Halifax, Massachusetts. The two Joneses were not related; they were close friends who had come to the area to camp.
Police described the killings as taking place during a robbery. Woodbury was in custody within a day.
Woodbury was taken into custody in Maine the following day, July 3, 2007. On July 5 he publicly admitted the killings, and Oxford County deputies brought him to the District Court in South Paris, Maine, for an extradition hearing. He was then transferred to New Hampshire and held in custody there.
The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office prosecuted the case. Three counts of first-degree murder were brought, and life imprisonment without parole is the mandatory sentence in New Hampshire for that offense. The case ended in a guilty plea.
On Friday, August 17, 2007, in Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, Woodbury pleaded guilty to the three murders. Judge Edward Fitzgerald sentenced him to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole. His attorney, Caroline Smith, appeared for him.
He apologized in court to each of the three men and to their families. Relatives of two of the dead addressed him in court.
By 2009 Woodbury was in Florida. In 2017 he was held at a Florida state prison in Okeechobee County, where, on September 22, 2017, he killed a fellow inmate, Antoneeze Haynes.
A Florida grand jury indicted Woodbury on March 13, 2018 for first-degree premeditated murder. Judge Jeral Bryant of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit stated that the state would seek the death penalty. The case was tried in Okeechobee County before Judge Sherwood Bauer. The prosecutors were Assistant State Attorneys Ashley Albright and Don Richardson.
At his first court appearance Woodbury asked to represent himself. The court held the inquiries required before a defendant may waive counsel, found his waiver knowing and voluntary, and appointed standby counsel. Throughout the case the judge offered him a lawyer. The judge described a defendant in such a case choosing to act alone as "very unusual" but said he respected the choice.
The trial began on May 14, 2018. Woodbury testified in his own defense. Then, on May 21, 2018, he told the court: "At this time, I'd like to plead guilty to first-degree premeditated murder, your honor." After a colloquy the judge accepted the plea and found him competent to waive counsel for the penalty phase, in which he again insisted on representing himself.
The penalty phase began on July 23, 2018. A 12-member jury recommended death unanimously after 37 minutes of deliberation. It found four aggravating factors: that he had committed the murder while under a sentence of imprisonment, that he had a prior conviction for a violent or capital felony, that the murder was cold, calculated and premeditated, and a fourth concerning the nature of the offense. The sentencing hearing was held on September 21, 2018, and Judge Bauer imposed the death sentence that day. He gave great weight to all four aggravating factors, minimal weight to the claim that Woodbury was under extreme mental or emotional disturbance, and little weight to the bipolar disorder diagnosed in his history.
Because Florida death sentences are reviewed automatically by the state supreme court, an appeal was filed in December 2018. The court heard oral argument on June 3, 2020. Woodbury, represented by the Public Defender's Office, raised ten claims. They included that he should not have been allowed to represent himself or to waive mental health mitigation without a competency hearing, that his guilty plea was not intelligent, that the aggravating factor of cold, calculated and premeditated murder was not established, that the presentence report was incomplete, and that the jury should have received an instruction on mercy and on the standard of proof for aggravating factors.
On April 15, 2021, the court rejected every claim in a per curiam opinion of about 55 pages: "Because Woodbury has not demonstrated any reversible error, we affirm the judgment of conviction and sentence of death." Chief Justice Charles T. Canady and Justices Ricky Polston, Jorge Labarga, Alan Lawson, Carlos G. Muñiz and John D. Couriel took part. Justice Jamie R. Grosshans did not. Justice Labarga concurred in the result, writing that a competency evaluation "would have been in order" given Woodbury's significant mental health history.
Woodbury's public defenders then petitioned the United States Supreme Court. The petition was filed in November 2021, and Florida's response was due on December 23, 2021, after the state requested and was granted a one-month extension.
A postconviction appeal, in which Woodbury challenged a lower court's denial of his motion to vacate the conviction and death sentence, was argued before the Florida Supreme Court on February 6, 2025, together with a related case against the Secretary of the Department of Corrections. He raised seven arguments. Prosecutor Albright had said in 2021 that several more years of appellate review would likely pass before any sentence could be carried out.
In New Hampshire a conviction for first-degree murder carries one sentence, life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, so a guilty plea ended the case in a single hearing. In Florida a death sentence is reviewed automatically by the state supreme court, which examines the conviction and the sentence, and a prisoner may then seek review in the United States Supreme Court and bring postconviction claims in the state courts. Woodbury's case has followed each of these steps.
Woodbury's competency to waive counsel in Florida is the point on which the justices of the Florida Supreme Court differed: the court held that no competency hearing was required, while Justice Labarga wrote that an evaluation would have been in order. The mental-health claims were raised again in the postconviction appeal argued in February 2025.
1996 to 2002: Serves a Florida sentence for bank robbery.
Before May 2007: Serves five years in Maine for robbery and theft.
May 4, 2007: Released from a Maine state prison.
July 2, 2007: James Walker, William Jones and Gary Jones are killed in Conway, New Hampshire.
July 3, 2007: Taken into custody in Maine.
July 5, 2007: Extradition hearing in South Paris, Maine.
August 17, 2007: Pleads guilty in Merrimack County Superior Court to three counts of first-degree murder; sentenced to three consecutive terms of life without parole.
2009: Held in Florida.
September 22, 2017: Antoneeze Haynes is killed in Okeechobee County, Florida.
March 13, 2018: Indicted for first-degree premeditated murder.
May 14, 2018: Trial begins.
May 21, 2018: Pleads guilty to first-degree premeditated murder.
July 23, 2018: Penalty phase begins; jury unanimously recommends death.
September 21, 2018: Sentenced to death.
December 2018: Appeal filed.
June 3, 2020: Oral argument before the Florida Supreme Court.
April 15, 2021: Florida Supreme Court affirms conviction and sentence.
November 2021: Petition filed in the United States Supreme Court.
February 6, 2025: Postconviction appeal argued before the Florida Supreme Court.