Starke, Florida.-A man from Florida who killed an 8-year-old girl and her grandmother on a night she drank a lot and used drugs will run on Thursday.
Edward James, 63, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection from 6 pm in Florida state prison outside Starke under a death order signed in February by Governor Ron Desantis. Except for a last minute break, the execution will be the second this year in Florida, which is planning a third in April.
This week three other executions were scheduled around the United States: Louisiana put a man to death on Tuesday using nitrogen gas for the first time while the executions were resumed after a 15 -year parenthesis. Arizona injected on Wednesday a man who had kidnapped and killed his girlfriend’s ex -husband. Another lethal injection is planned on Thursday in Oklahoma.
James drew the death penalty for the murders of September 19, 1993 by Toni Neuner and Betty Dick, 8, 58, the child’s grandmother. James had been renting a room at Dick’s house in Casselberry. Where Toni Neuner and three other children also stayed that night.
The judicial records show that James drank up to 24 beers at a party, knocked down some Geneva and also took LSD before returning to his room at Dick’s house. The girl was raped and strangled to death. The other children were not damaged.
James, who declared himself guilty of the charges, was also convicted of rape and stealing Dick’s jewels and car after stabbing it 21 times. The judicial documents show that James led the car throughout the country, occasionally sold jewelry pieces until it was arrested on October 6 of that year in Bakersfield, California.
Police obtained a confession recorded on Video from James, who despite their guilt statements was sentenced to death by a recommendation of 11-1 by a jury.
James’s lawyers presented several appeals before the state and federal courts, all of which were denied. More recently, the Florida Supreme Court rejected an argument that James’s use and alcohol’s use, several head injuries and a heart attack in 2023 led to a mental deterioration that would make their execution cruel and unusual punishment.
The judges, however, agreed with a decision of the lower court that “James’s cognitive problems do not protect him from execution.” The court also rejected an argument of James’s lawyers that the heart attack he suffered in prison led to oxygen deprivation that affected his brain and should be considered new evidence to stop execution.
Even if it is a new evidence, the court determined, “the defendant cannot establish that such evidence would probably generate a less severe sentence to a new phase of penalty.”
The non -profit death penalty information center said Florida uses a three -medication cocktail for lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart.
Earlier this year, James Ford was executed for the murders of a couple in 1997 in Charlotte County, witnessed by his little daughter, who survived. Desantis also signed a death order for the execution of April 8 by Michael Tanzi for the murder in 2000 of a woman in the Keys of Florida.
