With his signing of a death warrant for Duane Owen on Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis has now approved four executions in less than four months, ending a long drought where he didn’t condemn any murderers to die.
That move comes as DeSantis is on the verge of declaring a bid for the White House, raising the question of whether he’s attempting to boost his conservative bona fides, as even Democrats such as former Gov. Bob Graham have done in the past.
DeSantis has said that legal complications and the pandemic delayed him from signing death warrants for more than three years and that politics has nothing to do with it.
But state Sen. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, contended it is “all part of his ambition to be the presidential nominee for the Republicans, to show that he’s tough on crime and he’s willing to impose the death penalty.”
DeSantis also signed two new bills into law that greatly expand the death penalty. One adds child sexual assault to the list of capital crimes, while another allows just eight of 12 jurors to sentence someone to die.
The governor’s expansion comes despite the Catholic Church’s condemnation of the practice, which has led to soul-searching on the part of Catholic Florida governors such as former Gov. Jeb Bush.
So is DeSantis, who has made his faith a key tenet of his political identity, a practicing Catholic who’s violating the church’s teachings? Asked twice, DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin wouldn’t say.
Last year, Griffin did tell the Tampa Bay Times, “The governor is a Christian and there is absolutely no issue with him sharing his values or utilizing them in his decision-making as a leader.”
323 people on death row
Owen is scheduled to die by lethal injection on June 15 in the murders of Georgianna Worden and Karen Slattery in 1984 in Boca Raton and Delray Beach.
On May 3, the state executed Darryl Barwick for the 1986 murder of Rebecca Wendt in Panama City, which followed the April 12 execution of…
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