This year, Florida executed a prisoner for the first time in more than three years—a US man who was found guilty of murdering a man with a knife in 1990. Donald Dillbeck was put to death on Thursday night by lethal injection, the Florida Department of Prisons announced in a statement, according to AFP. Dillbeck, who killed a woman in 1990 while attempting to carjack her in a parking lot of a Tallahassee mall, was imprisoned for the past 32 years, according to local media.
The US Supreme Court denied his attorney’s frantic request for a stay
On Wednesday, the US Supreme Court denied his attorney’s frantic request for a stay. The children of Faye Lam Vann, who was killed by Dillbeck, were present at the execution and expressed their gratitude to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for authorizing the sentence. He authorized Dillbeck’s execution on the same day he suggested lowering the threshold for a jury’s approval of a death sentence in his state, according to the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper.
During the final hearing, Dillbeck said, “I know I hurt people when I was young. I really messed up.” He used his words to hit out DeSantis who is a potential 2024 presidential candidate. “But I know Ron DeSantis has done a lot worse. He’s taken a lot from a lot of people.” Dillbeck is the 100th person to have been put to death in the state of Florida since the Supreme Court reintroduced the capital penalty in 1976, making her the seventh person to have been put to death in the United States so far this year.
