Florida to execute first inmate in 4 years as state seeks to enact lowest death penalty threshold in nation
Florida is set to carry out its first execution in four years later this week, prompting death penalty advocates to protest against it and push for the abolition of the death penalty.
GOP Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a death warrant for Donald Dillbeck, 59, who was convicted of fatally stabbing a woman during a carjacking at a Tallahassee mall in 1990. The stabbing came two days after he escaped while serving a life sentence for killing a sheriff’s deputy in 1979. Dillbeck’s execution is scheduled for Thursday and lawyers are traveling the state this week protesting the death penalty.
“Why kill people who kill people to show that Americans are killing people is wrong? Journey of Hope co-founder SueZann Bosler told FOX 13.
Bosler was part of a group outside the Hillsborough County Courthouse on Monday to protest the death penalty as part of a statewide tour by the organization Death Penalty Action. She had previously worked to have the death sentence of her father’s killer, James Campbell, reduced to life imprisonment, an effort that was eventually granted after four trials.
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Donald Dillbeck, 59, who was convicted of fatally stabbing a woman during a carjacking at a mall in Tallahassee in 1990, is to be performed on Thursday. (Florida Department of Corrections)
“If James had been given life at the start I would have had all these years to start healing early right after it happened so I’m in a better place today and easier and more relaxed and better with myself. -even,” Bosler said.
Florida currently has 301 people on death row, and no executions have taken place in the Sunshine State since 2019, the longest period without an execution since 1983. And Florida lawmakers are pushing to ease sentencing. someone to death.
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Florida is due to carry out its first execution in four years later this week. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
House Bill 555, which is being considered by the state legislature, would reduce the number of jurors needed to sentence someone to death. State law currently requires a unanimous decision for a death sentence but, if the bill passes, only eight jurors are expected to agree.
The eight-juror threshold for the death penalty would be the lowest in the country. Only a few states do not require a unanimous jury decision, including Alabama, which requires that 10 jurors must agree on a death sentence.
Florida lawmakers are proposing a bill to lower the threshold needed to sentence someone to death. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)
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“If I had to help the government kill James, I would be like James,” Bosler said. “I would be. My title would be killer too, so they don’t think that’s why we have to educate these people.”
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