No Legend, No Legacy: Thomas Eugene Bevel and the Two Lives Taken on February 28, 2004

Some names should never become legends. Thomas Eugene Bevel is one of them. What he did on February 28, 2004, in Jacksonville, earned him no story worth retelling — only a record. Two people were killed that day: Garrick Stringfield, who was 30 years old, and his son, Phillip Sims, who was 13. A third person, Feletta Smith, was shot at and survived. Those are the names this story belongs to. Bevel’s is here only because the law put it there.

February 28, 2004

Thomas Bevel was 22 years old. He lived with Garrick Stringfield — his friend and roommate, a man the Florida Supreme Court later described as someone Bevel was close to. Stringfield was 30. His son Phillip was 13.

On February 28, 2004, inside that home, Bevel used an AK-47 rifle to kill Garrick Stringfield and to shoot Feletta Smith, a woman both men had known since childhood. As Bevel was leaving the house, he shot and killed 13-year-old Phillip Sims.

A father and his son, dead in their own home, on the same day, at the hands of a man who lived under the same roof. A 13-year-old boy who was not the target of any argument, not a party to any dispute — killed as Bevel walked out the door. That is the whole of it, and it is enough. The public record establishes no motive that changes any of that, and this series will not invent one.

The trial

In 2005, a Duval County jury convicted Thomas Bevel of two counts of first-degree murder — for the killings of Garrick Stringfield and Phillip Sims — and one count of attempted first-degree murder, for the shooting of Feletta Smith. The jury recommended death for the murder of Stringfield by a vote of eight to four, and death for the murder of Sims by a vote of twelve to zero. The court sentenced Bevel to death for each murder, and to life imprisonment for the attempted murder.

On direct appeal, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and the death sentences in 2008 (Bevel v. State, 983 So. 2d 505). The record, as the court found it, was settled: two first-degree murders, one attempted first-degree murder, all committed on February 28, 2004.

But a death sentence is never the end of the legal story, and Bevel’s case is no exception.

Vacated, then imposed again

In 2017, the Florida Supreme Court reversed the denial of Bevel’s motion for postconviction relief and sent the case back for a new penalty phase (Bevel v. State, 221 So. 3d 1168). The court concluded that Bevel’s counsel had been ineffective during the penalty phase, and that he was entitled to relief under Hurst v. State for the death sentence imposed for Stringfield’s murder. The convictions stood. The death sentences did not — not yet. A new penalty phase would decide them again.

That new penalty phase came in late 2021. On December 14, 2021, the jury unanimously found the proposed aggravating factors proven beyond a reasonable doubt — including a prior violent felony, based on a prior attempted robbery conviction and the contemporaneous murder and attempted murder, and, as to Sims’s murder, that it was committed for the purpose of avoiding arrest — and unanimously voted to sentence Bevel to death for each murder. On February 11, 2022, Circuit Judge Adrian G. Soud sentenced him to death a second time.

What is worth noting is what the 2017 decision did not touch. The convictions were never disturbed. No court ever questioned that Bevel killed Garrick Stringfield and Phillip Sims and tried to kill Feletta Smith. The entire second round of proceedings concerned only the penalty — whether the death sentences had been imposed on a sound foundation. The guilt findings stood through every appeal, untouched, from 2005 to 2023. Only the sentence had to be decided twice.

Bevel appealed again. On October 26, 2023, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed both death sentences (Bevel v. State, 376 So. 3d 587). The court’s opinion rehearsed the case from the beginning: convicted in 2005 of the first-degree murders of his friend and roommate, Garrick Stringfield, and Stringfield’s thirteen-year-old son, Phillip Sims, and the attempted murder of Feletta Smith. The court found no error entitling Bevel to relief, and affirmed. A motion for rehearing was denied on December 15, 2023. Bevel remains on Florida’s death row.

Nineteen years passed between the murders and the final affirmance. Nearly two decades of appeals, a vacated sentence, a second penalty phase, a second death sentence, and a second affirmance. The machinery of the law turned slowly and thoroughly, as it is supposed to. What it never did, at any point, was undo what happened on February 28, 2004.

No legend

This is the point of the No Legends series: some men want their names to mean something, and the worst thing a city can do is give it to them. Thomas Bevel’s name means nothing beyond the record — a 22-year-old who killed his roommate and his roommate’s 13-year-old son, was convicted, was sentenced to death, lost that sentence on appeal, and was sentenced to death again. There is no mystery to solve, no injustice to correct, no story to romanticize. There is only a verdict, twice confirmed, and two graves.

The names worth carrying from February 28, 2004, are Garrick Stringfield and Phillip Sims. A 30-year-old man, killed in his own home by someone he trusted enough to live with. A 13-year-old boy, killed as the shooter walked out. They are the reason this case is remembered — not the man who did it.

No legend. No legacy. Just the record, and the two lives it can never give back.