Authorities say a US man convicted of a 1990 stabbing murder was executed in Florida, the first capital sentence carried out in the southeastern state in more than three years.
Donald Dillbeck had spent the previous 32 years on death row after killing a woman in a parking lot in 1990 while on the run for murdering a police officer in 1979, when he was 15 years old, according to local media.
Dillbeck was executed by lethal injection on Thursday evening, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.
The US Supreme Court denied his lawyers’ last-minute stay request on Wednesday.
The family of Faye Lamb Vann, who was killed in a Tallahassee mall parking lot, attended the execution on Thursday and expressed gratitude to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for approving the sentence.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, DeSantis signed off on Dillbeck’s execution on the same day he proposed making capital punishment easier in his state by lowering the number of jury votes required to approve such a sentence.
Dillbeck’s final words were directed at DeSantis, a conservative Republican considered a potential presidential candidate in 2024.
“I know I used to hurt people when I was younger. “I really screwed up,” Dillbeck told the Tallahassee Democrat.
“But I know Ron DeSantis has done a lot worse. He’s taken a lot from many people.”
