MIAMI.- The state of Florida executed this Thursday Duane Owen, sentenced to death for the murders and rape of a teenager and a mother in 1984, after two appeals by his lawyers to stay the execution for serious mental problems, which were denied.
Owen, 62, received a lethal injection at 6:14 p.m. local time (22:14 GMT) at Raiford State Prison in north Florida and was pronounced dead a short time later, the Florida Department of Corrections (prisons) confirmed. .
It is the fourth execution of the year and the number 103 since capital punishment was restored in 1976 in Florida, where there are currently 300 prisoners on “death row”, three of them women.
Owen woke up around 7:00 a.m. local time (11:00 GMT) today, and his last dinner consisted of a bacon cheeseburger but no bun, onion rings, strawberries, a vanilla milkshake, and coffee, he said today at a press conference. Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kayla McLaughlin Smith.
McLaughlin Smith said Owen had no visitors.
Since 2000, Florida has allowed lethal injection as an alternative method of execution to the electric chair, something convicts can choose.
HORRENDOUS CRIMES
Owen, who has been on “death row” for 37 years, was convicted of the murders of Karen Slattery, a 14-year-old student, who was stabbed and then sexually assaulted, and Georgianna Worden, mother of 2, who was attacked with a hammer and raped.
There were two events that occurred in Palm Beach County, Florida, in 1984, within a few weeks of each other, and that Owen confessed to having committed when he was arrested that same year.
The cases were tried separately and he received death sentences in both trials.
Two appeals by his lawyers to stay the execution for serious mental problems were denied on Wednesday.
Both Judge Clarence Thomas, of the US Supreme Court, and South Florida District Judge Rodney Smith rejected the appeals filed by the defense, which had previously appealed to other instances with the same results.
A team of three psychiatrists appointed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to evaluate the convict’s mental health determined last May that he was “faking” a serious mental illness, but the defense continued to claim that his problems are “real” – schizophrenia. and insanity among others- and that, according to the Constitution, is disabled for capital punishment.
“Florida has little interest in seeing that sentences are carried out fairly and efficiently, but Owen (…) has the right to have his sentence conform to the Constitution,” the defense attorneys said in the appeal presented to the Court judge. Supreme Court Thomas Clarence, Florida Phoenix reported on Tuesday.
That right includes “the ability to have meaningful judicial review of the complex constitutional claims that it has timely raised,” they added in a citation to which they also allege that it was denied due process.
Seven Florida Supreme Court justices previously voted against a stay of Owen’s execution and rejected other defense requests, including one for imaging tests to determine the state of his brain.
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB) petitioned Governor DeSantis on May 31 to stay Owen’s execution and commute his sentence to life without parole, but his petition was not granted.
Since 1973, more than 190 people have been released from death row in the US on evidence of their innocence, with Florida, with 30 exonerated from capital punishment, being the state with the highest number, followed by Illinois (22) and Texas (16).
