One of Florida’s longest-serving death row prisoners has avoided execution amid reports that he is suffering from dementia, nearly five decades after his conviction in a torture murder.
Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew William Thompson’s death warrant Thursday, just five days before the 74-year-old inmate was scheduled to be executed for a killing once described by police as Miami-Dade’s “meanest murder.”
DeSantis did not explain the decision in a letter sent to Florida State Prison Warden Randall Polk and reviewed by The Post. The governor had signed Thompson’s death warrant only on Sept. 11.
The warrant’s withdrawal follows reports that Thompson, who has spent longer on Miami-Dade’s death row than any other inmate, is experiencing dementia.
Thompson was initially sentenced to death in 1976. Although the sentence was later overturned and reimposed, he twice avoided execution in the 1980s. He has remained on death row since 1989.
The Eighth Amendment bars the execution of death row inmates whose mental illness prevents them from understanding why they are being put to death.
In an emergency petition filed Sept. 16, Thompson’s attorney, Brittney Lacy, urged Florida Department of Corrections officials to immediately transfer him to a hospital, citing his need for “emergent medical care,” according to court documents reviewed by The Post.
“He could not give counsel any details about his hospital stays,” Lacy wrote, adding that Thompson “appeared unaware.”
The petition states that Thompson “did not understand” questions doctors asked him about his surgeries.
Florida neuropsychologist Robert Ouaou examined Thompson and concluded that he “meets the criteria for insanity due to his dementia and significant cognitive decline.”
According to the evaluation, Thompson “lacks the mental capacity to understand the fact of his impending execution and the reason for it.”
Thompson also told the doctor that he was in “severe pain” and “too weak to freely move his arms or extremities,” Lacy said in the filing.
Thompson had previously been hospitalized in Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Gainesville, where doctors documented what they described as a “knowledge deficit.”
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Court documents say he “did not know who the president was” and answered “Bush.” It remains unclear which former President Bush he meant.
His attorneys said Thompson was “unable to recall [what he had] eaten, [whether he had] been seen by medical staff [or] spoken to by anyone.”
Thompson was sentenced to death in 1976 after he and accomplice Rocco Surace were convicted in the killing of Sally Ivester at the Sunny Isles Motel in Miami Beach.
Ivester had been with another woman, Barbara Savage, when she encountered the two men, who would later become her killers.
The men demanded $200 from Ivester, but she was able to give them only $25.
The small payment reportedly enraged the pair, who beat Ivester with chains and burned her with cigarettes during the attack.
Thompson and Surace then ordered Ivester to call her mother and ask for additional money before assaulting her.
The killing was so brutal that local cops described it as “Dade’s meanest murder,” according to the Miami Herald.
Ivester died from shock and the internal injuries she sustained.
Surace initially pleaded guilty to the kidnapping, rape and murder of Ivester – before the Supreme Court reversed his sentence. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 203 years in prison before he died in 1993 while in custody.
Thompson’s initial death row sentence was overturned – before he was spared from execution twice in 1982 and 1987.
He was sent back to death row in 1989, where he remained for more than 30 years – before the motion was withdrawn.
“Withdrawing the death warrant for William Thompson was the correct decision. Mr. Thompson is gravely ill, not competent, and intellectually disabled,” Grace Hanna, the executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said, welcoming DeSantis’ decision.
“His execution would have been an abject violation of the Eighth Amendment and an affront to human dignity.”
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