Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has withdrawn the death warrant for a 74-year-old inmate, just days before his scheduled execution, amid serious concerns about dementia and profound cognitive decline.
The Republican governor canceled William Lee Thompson’s execution late Thursday without offering an explanation, Florida Trib reports.
The decision came months after forensic neuropsychologist Robert H. Ouaou concluded that Thompson displayed a “profound level” of cognitive impairment. Federal and Florida law bar the execution of people with intellectual disabilities.
“He did not recognize he had been sentenced to death and was unable to demonstrate meaningful insight into his present condition,” Ouaou wrote in his evaluation.
Thompson had been set to die by lethal injection on October 13 at Florida State Prison in Raiford for the 1976 killing of 23-year-old Sally Ivester.
According to prosecutors, Thompson, then 23, and Rocco James Surace, 30, attacked Ivester at a Miami hotel, beating her with chains, burning her with cigarettes and assaulting her with a chair leg. She later died from shock and internal injuries. At the time, police described the crime as “Dade’s meanest murder.”
Thompson and Surace initially pleaded guilty to murder and were sentenced to death. Their cases were later sent back for new trials following appeals.
Thompson pleaded guilty again and was resentenced to death in 1978. Surace was convicted of second-degree murder, received a 203-year prison term and died behind bars in 1993.
William Lee Thompson, 74, had been scheduled to be executed on October 13
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (pictured last year) canceled death row inmate William Lee Thompson’s death warrant without providing an explanation on Thursday
Thompson became the first gravely ill prisoner to remain on death watch, a highly restrictive housing unit in Starke, Florida, where inmates with signed death warrants await execution.
He has been diagnosed with dementia and, in recent months, required extensive hospital treatment for sepsis, systolic heart failure, severe malnutrition and multiple decubitus ulcers.
The convicted murderer was discharged from UF Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville on September 10 after hospital officials understood that he would return to the prison’s medical unit, according to the Trib.
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Instead, he was taken out of the medical unit just 24 hours later, after DeSantis signed the death warrant.
Thompson’s lawyers subsequently sought a court order requiring the state to move him back to a medical facility where he could receive appropriate treatment.
In court filings obtained by the Miami Herald, attorneys said Ouaou found Thompson disoriented during the evaluation. The inmate also reportedly said numerous times that he was experiencing severe pain.
Thompson was shackled to his wheelchair during the assessment and appeared “too weak to freely move his arms or extremities,” according to the neuropsychologist.
Prison medical staff likewise documented signs of disorientation, an unsteady gait and a “change in mental status.”
They reported that Thompson “did not know who the president was,” believed the president was “Bush” and was “unable to verbally respond” when questioned by a nurse.
Sally Ivester, 23, was beaten with chains, burned with cigarettes and assaulted with a chair leg at a hotel in Miami in what police at the time called “Dade’s meanest murder”
The state ultimately denied the request to return Thompson to a prison where he could receive medical care.
But DeSantis instead issued a temporary stay of execution and commissioned doctors Wade Myers, Tonia Werner and Emily Lazarou to do their own evaluation of the inmate.
It is unclear what those doctors concluded.
In a statement, Grace Hanna, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said the governor’s withdrawal of Thompson’s death warrant was ‘the correct decision.’
‘Mr Thompson is gravely ill, not competent, and intellectually disabled,’ she said. ‘His execution would have been an abject violation of the Eighth Amendment and an affront to human dignity.’
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.