[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLORIDA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 29



FLORIDA----impending execution

Death row inmate eats last meal, talks with spiritual advisor before execution


Death row inmate Jerry Correll is scheduled to be executed tonight by 
lethal-injection at Florida State Prison


Jerry Correll's day has been full of lasts.

He woke up for the last time at 6 a.m.


He ate his last meal at 10 a.m.

He spoke with his spiritual advisor one last time for nearly two hours.


And he talked on the phone with his daughter one last time.

Correll, 59, is scheduled to be executed tonight at 6 p.m. by lethal-injection 
at Florida State Prison in Raiford.

The Orlando man stabbed to death his ex-wife, Susan, their 5-year-old daughter 
Tuesday, and Susan's mother and sister in 1985.

The scene Correll left behind at the Conway-area home was among the bloody and 
gory, police and prosecutors said at the time.

McKinley Lewis, communications director for the Florida Department of 
Corrections, held a press briefing this afternoon providing details about 
Correll's final hours before his execution.

Controversial drug

The execution was the first in the nation since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 
June which allowed the use of midazolam, a sedative that is part of the 
three-drug protocol used in Florida executions.

A group of Oklahoma death-row inmates said the drug was ineffective in 
adequately making inmates unconscious, and point to botched executions where 
inmates have shown signs they are suffering from pain by gasping and clenching 
their fists.

In Correll's appeals, his lawyers said because of his previous drug and 
alcohol-use, the drug would not work on him. But the Florida Supreme Court 
justices unanimously rejected the argument.

In earlier appeals, Correll's attorneys argued he was abused by his alcoholic 
father and became a drug addict. They also indicated the deaths were a drug 
hit, but never offered any details.

Correll becomes the second inmate executed in Florida this year, and the 91st 
since 1979, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

There's only two other executions in the nation scheduled this year, in Texas 
and Missouri, and only four next year, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center.

States such as Ohio have stayed all executions because it is having trouble 
obtaining the necessary drugs.

A U.S. Supreme Court regarding whether all death penalties should have a jury 
unanimous in sentencing death also is pending.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information 
Center, said using midazolam is risky.

"Most of states that have the death penalty are staying away from midazolam," 
Dunham said. "They're staying away from it because what everybody else has 
seen, and that is there is a real risk that the prisoner will feel intense 
pain."

'Heinous, atrocious and cruel'

Susan Correll, 25, suffered stab wounds throughout her body, including some 
that weren't fatal, indicating Correll may have tortured her before killing 
her, and then had sex with her body.

Her mother, 48-year-old Mary Lou Hines, had defensive wounds, apparently from 
protecting Tuesday, before both were killed. Tuesday was wearing her pajamas 
and clutching a doll.

Susan's sister Marybeth Jones was out on a date during the initial killings. 
She entered through a side door and didn't see the carnage on the other side of 
the house. She was getting a glass of water in the kitchen when Correll 
attacked, dragging her to her bedroom where he stabbed her to death.

Their bodies were found on July 1, 1985, by a neighbor and Susan's co-worker.

Correll showed up to the scene, with cuts to his hand and acted 
"inappropriately" for a man who just found out his daughter and ex-wife were 
killed, Orange County Sheriff's deputies said at the time. He was arrested the 
next day.

At the trial, Correll's defense attorneys argued that he was with a woman at 
Lake Toho getting high at the time of the slayings, but the woman was never 
found.

A jury of 10 women and 2 men, selected in Sarasota because all the publicity 
locally, convicted Correll of four counts of first-degree murder after a 
week-long trial. They sentenced him to die in a 10-2 vote.

Judge R. James Stroker said in sentencing Correll to death called Tuesday's 
death "especially heinous, atrocious and cruel." A doctor at the trial said she 
lived for about 5 minutes before losing consciousness.

"It is difficult to imagine the degree of emotional anguish suffered by that 
dying child," Stroker wrote. "She had apparently witnessed the brutal murder of 
her mother and experience the horror of her own father repeatedly driving a 
sharp knife in her chest."

(source: Orlando Sentinel)