I
Convicted Killer Executed After 29 Years on Death Row
By Ron Word
Associated Press Writer
STARKE, Fla. (AP) - A convicted killer who described himself
as "the poster boy of the death penalty" was put to death by injection
Wednesday for the 1976 murder of another inmate.
After 29 years on death row, Bennie Demps was executed for
the stabbing death of Alfred Sturgis, who was attacked in his cell by
three inmates.
Demps spoke for seven minutes, proclaiming his innocence
before the execution.
"This is not an execution, this is murder," Demps said. "I
am an innocent man."
During his statement, Demps also called on his lawyer,
George Schaefer, to investigate why it took almost an hour to prepare
him for the execution.
Demps was strapped to a gurney beginning at 5:40 p.m. and
the execution didn't take place until 6:40 p.m.
Demps called the execution a "low-tech lynching by poison."
"Governor Bush, you have done what you said you would never
do and that's kill an innocent man," Demps said.
Demps was officially declared dead at 6:53 p.m., 13 minutes
after the lethal cocktail of chemicals was administered intravenously.
The execution was scheduled for 6 p.m., but was delayed for
a few reasons, according to Justin Sayfie, a spokesman for Gov. Jeb
Bush.
Both the U.S. Supreme Court and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in Atlanta turned down appeals Wednesday, but the paperwork
from the Supreme Court wasn't received until 5:30 p.m., Sayfie said.
There were also problems with the IV, Sayfie said. The
technicians had trouble finding a vein for an alternate IV and finally
decided to just use a primary line that was already inserted into Demps'
left arm.
Schaefer said he would ask State Attorney Rod Smith to
investigate Demps' allegations that he was mistreated during the
procedure.
Schaefer said he was concerned about the delay and Demps'
claims that he was cut in the leg and groin during attempts to find an
alternate line and it was painful.
The Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, on behalf
of Pope John Paul II, sent a letter to the governor asking for clemency
for Demps.
Bush received the letter less than a hour before the
execution, Sayfie said.
The Pope has intervened in only a handful of Florida death
penalty cases.
The evening execution reflects a change in Florida State
Prison execution proceedings. In the past, they usually were set for
early mornings.
Demps, 49, a Marine wounded in Vietnam, previously had
escaped three dates with the electric chair. He said he now was being
executed because he had cheated the executioner in a 1971 double murder.
"They are trying to execute me in this case for that case,"
Demps said in an interview Tuesday. "They want a free execution."
Demps was served a last meal of barbecue chicken and beef,
french fries, dinner salad, Spanish rice, rolls, cherry vanilla and
butter pecan ice cream, a mango, banana pudding and Pepsi. He only ate
half of the meal.
Over his last several days, he received visits from his
wife, Tracy Carothers Demps, of Surrey, British Columbia. She sat in a
car outside the prison before the execution was scheduled to take place.
Demps was first condemned for the 1971 murders of R.N.
Brinkworth and Celia Puhlick, fatally shot in a Lake County citrus
grove. They were inspecting land when they happened upon Demps, who had
fled to the grove with a stolen safe.
A year after Demps was sent to death row, the Supreme Court
threw out capital punishment across the country. Demps was one of 97
Florida inmates taken off death row.
In July 1976, the nation's high court upheld Florida's new
death law. Two months later, on Sept. 6, 1976, Sturgis was stabbed to
death at Florida State Prison.
The dying Sturgis told a prison guard that Demps and another
inmate had held him down while a third inmate stabbed him.
"They have used me as the poster boy of the death penalty,"
Demps said Tuesday. "I am an innocent man, wrongly convicted in this
murder, and I should be allowed to prove it."
The Florida Supreme Court in 1981 upheld Demps' death
sentence in Sturgis' slaying, rejecting his argument that it should be
overturned because the other two inmates were given life sentences.
Judges noted that the other two had no prior murder convictions.
Demps was the third inmate executed this year, and the third
by lethal injection. Since Florida resumed the death penalty, 46 other
inmates have been put to death, all but this year's in the electric
chair.
Thomas Provenzano, 50, is scheduled to be executed June 20.
Provenzano, who gunned down three bailiffs when he opened fire in an
Orlando courthouse in 1984, has said he believes he is being executed
because he is Jesus Christ.
AP-ES-06-07-00 1958EDT
� Copyright 2000 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
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