Florida Gov. DeSantis on pace to break death penalty record with execution of mistaken-identity killer Michael Bell

Independent

5 days ago

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the warrant for the state to execute convicted murderer Michael Bell, he tied the state's record for most executions within a year — with six months remaining.
Bell, who was convicted of killing a Jacksonville couple in what prosecutors called a revenge killing gone wrong, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on July 15. He is expected to be the eighth person killed by the state so far this year alone.
His execution will follow the state's scheduled killing of Thomas L. Gudinas on June 24. Gudinas was convicted of raping and murdering a woman in Orlando bar in 1994. Gudinas has appealed his sentence to the Supreme Court.
Florida executed Anthony Wainwright on June 10, becoming the six person put to death by the state in 2024, averaging at least one killing every month since the beginning of the year.
DeSantis, who briefly challenged Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for president, is set to break records set by former governors Bob Graham in 1984 and Rick Scott in 2014.
Florida executed 196 people within a 40-year period from 1924 through May 1964. There were no state executions in the years that followed, until after 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment. Florida had executed more than 100 people since the late 1970s.
More than 283 people are imprisoned on death row in jails across the state, according to the Death Penalty Information center, a research and advocacy group.
Bell publicly swore revenge for his brother Lamar's murder after a man named Theodore Wright killed him in self-defense in June 1933, according to prosecutors.
In December of that year, Bell, after buying an AK-47, found Wright's car in a parking lot and waited for the owner to return.
But Bell didn't realize Wright sold his car to a relative, Jimmy West, who walked to the car with Tamecka Smith and another woman.
Bell then fired 12 rounds at West and Smith. He was convicted of their murders in 1995.
Death row inmates can choose their method of execution by either electrocution or lethal injunction. The first person electrocuted by the state was Frank Johnson in 1924.
All state executions, including use of an electric chair nicknamed 'Old Sparky,' are carried out by a civilian executioner at Florida State Prison in Raiford.
Advocates against the death penalty as well as the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops have urged the governor to end what is becoming a relatively swift series of executions.
'There is a way to punish without ending another human life,' bishops conference director Michael Sheedy wrote in a recent letter to the governor.
'Life-long incarceration without the possibility of parole is a severe yet more humane punishment that ensures societal safety, allows the guilty the possibility of redemption, and offers finality to court processes,' he added.
Florida lawmakers also are considering legislation to expand convictions that are eligible for execution. Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled state legislature voted during a special session to mandate the death penalty for 'unauthorized aliens' found guilty of a capital offense.
The governor has also signed legislation that opens the door executions by nitrogen gas, hangings, and firing squads, adding to a list of methods that includes electrocution and lethal injunctions.
House Bill 903, among other things, allows any form of execution 'not deemed unconstitutional.' If lethal injection or electrocution is found to be unconstitutional, 'then any constitutional method will be administered,' according to the bill. The law takes effect July 1.
The state's expansion of state-level executions follows signals from the Trump administration to resume executions of federal death row inmates and seek the death penalty in future cases. In the final weeks of his presidency, Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of 40 people on death row in federal facilities.
In an executive order, President Trump called on the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty in future cases 'for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.'
Three remaining federal death row inmates include Robert Gregory Bowers, who killed 11 people in an antisemitic attack at a Pittsburgh synagogue; Dylann Roof, who killed nine African Americans during a prayer service in North Carolina; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped coordinate the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured 264 others.