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| Gov. Bush signs death warrant for inmate |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 04/30/2004 |
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A child molester once convicted of threatening former Vice President Dan Quayle is set to die May 25 for killing another inmate. That date is the 25th anniversary of Florida's first execution since the death penalty was restored in 1976. Gov. Jeb Bush signed a death warrant Wednesday for John Blackwelder, who received a death sentence after pleading guilty to murdering convicted killer Raymond Wigley. He was slain May 6, 2000, at Columbia Correctional Institution in Lake City. Blackwelder, 49, formerly of Fort Pierce, testified he wanted to commit a crime to get the death penalty because he was unable to accept life in prison. He was serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in St. Lucie County but insisted he was not guilty. The execution, by lethal injection, is set for 6 p.m. on May 25 at Florida State Prison in Starke. Anti-death-penalty activist Abe Bonowitz compared Blackwelder's death wish with "suicide by cop" in which people try to end their lives by doing something to make police shoot them. "This time it's suicide by governor," said Bonowitz, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Blackwelder will be the seventh such death-penalty volunteer to be executed since Bush took office in 1999, he said. "Poor Governor Bush is in a stuck position," Blackwelder wrote in an April 20 letter to another anti-death-penalty activist, Hannah Floyd. "Let's say he does not sign the death warrant - it will tell anyone with LWPOP (life without probation or parole) he has a 'license to kill,'" Blackwelder wrote. "If the governor signs the warrant, then it sends a different message, and that is anyone that has a LWPOP can now get state-assisted suicide by killing an inmate or staff." The Florida Supreme Court affirmed Blackwelder's conviction and death sentence in July after an automatic appeal. He then filed a motion to waive any more appeals. Wigley, who was serving a life sentence, and John Marek, who was sentenced to death, were convicted of the rape, torture and murder of Adella Maria Simmons in 1983. Marek, 42, remains on Death Row. |
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