Man convicted in 1994 rape and murder of Michelle McGrath put to death in Florida
A man convicted of raping and killing a woman near a central Florida bar was executed Tuesday evening.
Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, was pronounced dead at 6.13pm after receiving a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, said Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for the governor, Ron DeSantis.
Gudinas had been convicted in the May 1994 killing of Michelle McGrath.
When the curtain to the execution room opened at 6.00pm, Gudinas was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his left arm. Then, after the warden got off the phone with the governor's office, he asked Gudinas whether he wanted to make a last statement. Although Gudinas's words were inaudible to those in the viewing room, Griffin said he repented and made a reference to Jesus.
The drugs were administered, and Gudinas's eyes began to roll back as he underwent slight chest convulsions. After several minutes, he lost color in his face and fell still. The prison warden announced that the sentence had been carried out, the curtain to the execution chamber closed and witnesses were escorted out.
Gudinas was the seventh person put to death in Florida this year, with an eighth scheduled for next month. The state executed six people in 2023, and carried out one execution last year.
A total of 24 men have been put to death in the US this year, with scheduled executions set to make 2025 the year with the most executions since 2015.
Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, while Texas and South Carolina are next, with four each. Alabama has executed three people, Oklahoma two, and Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana and Tennessee one. On Wednesday, Mississippi will carry out its first execution since 2022.
Despite the increased frequency of executions this year, Florida department of corrections spokesperson Ted Veerman said there's been no significant operational strain.
'Our staff are doing a fantastic job keeping up with the pace of these executions,' Veerman said Tuesday. 'And we are going through with these in a professional manner.'
McGrath was last seen at a bar called Barbarella's shortly before 3am on 24 May 1994. Her body, showing evidence of serious trauma and sexual assault, was found several hours later in an alley next to a nearby school.
Gudinas had been at the same bar with friends the night before, and they all later testified that they had left without him. A school employee who found McGrath's body later identified Gudinas as a man who had been fleeing the area shortly beforehand. Another woman identified Gudinas as the person who had chased her to her car the previous night and threatened to assault her.
Gudinas was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995.
Attorneys for Gudinas filed appeals with the Florida supreme court and the US supreme court, which were rejected.
The lawyers had argued in their state filing that evidence related to 'lifelong mental illnesses' exempted Gudinas from being put to death. The Florida supreme court denied the appeals last week, ruling that the case law that shields intellectually disabled people from execution does not apply to individuals with other forms of mental illness or brain damage.
Separately, a federal filing argued that the Florida governor's unfettered discretion to sign death warrants violates death row inmates' constitutional rights to due process and has led to an arbitrary process for determining who lives and who dies. The US supreme court on Tuesday denied Gudinas's request for a stay of execution.
Officials said Gudinas had one visitor, his mother, on Tuesday and did not meet with a spiritual adviser.
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