(Starke) A man who killed two people in front of a Florida bar as part of an attempted revenge was executed on Tuesday. This is the 26e execution in the United States this year.
Michael Bernard Bell, 54, was declared dead at 6:25 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection to Florida’s state prison near Starke, said Bryan Griffin, spokesperson Ron Desantis. Bell was found guilty in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murders of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith.
When the director of the team asked Bell if he had a last word, he replied: “Thank you for not letting me spend the rest of my life in prison. »»
Photo provided by the prison department of Florida, Archives Agency France-Presse
Michael Bernard Bell
With the death of Bell, the number of executions in the United States has exceeded a person for last year, while there are more than five months to run.
The annual number of executions has generally decreased nationally during this century, after reaching a peak of 98 in 1999. From 1995 to 2006, there were an average of around 67 executions per year.
John Blume, director of Death Penalty Project of the Cornell Law School, says that the increase in executions does not seem to be linked to a change in public support for the death penalty or an increase in the rate of death sentences, but rather to the discretionary power of the governors of the States.
“A number of these executed people are people who have been in the system for a long time; They have been in the death corridor for a long time, “said Mr. Blume, adding that some aggressive managers and prosecutors” want to execute these people “.
He spoke of a large -scale presidential decree signed by President Donald Trump as soon as he returned to power, aimed at exhorting prosecutors to require the death penalty and to preserve the capital punishment in the States.
“The most cynical point of view would be: it seems important for the president, so that interests them,” added John Blume about governors.
The spokesman for the Florida Correctional Services department, Ted Veerman, said on Tuesday that the department was well prepared to pay his mission, as defined by the courts and the governor.
Bell would be the eighth person executed in Florida this year, a ninth being scheduled later this month. The state executed six people in 2023, but only one last year.
Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, Texas and South Carolina being ex æquo in second place with four each. Alabama has executed three people, Oklahoma killed two, and Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee each executed one.
Reproductive request rejected
In December 1993, Bell spotted what he thought was the car of the man who had killed his brother by bullet earlier that year, according to the judicial archives. Bell apparently ignored that the man had sold the car to Jimmy West.
Bell called two friends and armed himself with an AK-47 rifle, the authorities said. They found the car parked in front of a bar and waited. When Mr. West, Tamecka Smith and another woman ended up getting out of the bar, Bell approached the car and opened fire, the authorities said.
Mr. West died on site, and Mme Smith died on the hospital path. The other woman came out unscathed. Witnesses said that Bell had also shot a crowd of curious people before fleeing. He was finally arrested the following year.
Bell was then found guilty of three other murders. He had shot down a woman and his young son in 1989 and killed his mother’s boyfriend about four months before the assault against the two victims, the authorities said.
Penitentiary authorities said Bell woke up at 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday and had his last meal, made up of an omelet, bacon, homemade potatoes and orange juice. He had met a spiritual advisor, but had received no other visit.
The United States Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the request for a suspended sentence. His lawyers argued in their request that Bell’s execution should be suspended due to recently discovered evidence concerning testimonies. But the judges rejected this argument unanimously last week, stressing the overwhelming evidence of Bell’s guilt in a 54 -page notice.
The journalists of the Associated Press Kate Payne, in Tallahassee, Florida, and Freida Frisaro, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this dispatch.
