TALLAHASSEE – Lawyers for convicted assassin Duane Owen on Monday requested the U.S. Supreme Courtroom to block his execution, after Florida courts rejected arguments that he was not mentally competent to be set to dying.
With Owen scheduled to confront deadly injection Thursday at Florida Condition Jail, his lawyers requested that the U.S. Supreme Court docket situation a stay of execution and contended that he “lacks a rational comprehending of the connection involving his crime and impending execution thanks to his mounted psychotic delusions and dementia.”
Alongside with a stay, the attorneys want the U.S. Supreme Court to get a briefing about the difficulties or to mail the case back again to the Florida Supreme Court. The arguments are based mostly on the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment, and lawful precedents that stop executing folks who are not mentally qualified.
“Florida has a negligible desire in finality and economical enforcement of judgments, but Owen, whose delusions and dementia avert him from rationally comprehension the outcomes of his execution, has a right in guaranteeing that his execution comports with the Structure,” one particular of the files filed Monday stated. “This correct includes the capability to have significant judicial evaluate of the complex constitutional claims he well timed raises.”
Lawyers for the condition experienced not submitted responses as of late Monday afternoon, in accordance to a U.S. Supreme Court on line docket.
But the Florida Supreme Court docket issued two viewpoints past 7 days that refused to halt the execution. One particular of the viewpoints upheld a ruling by a Bradford County circuit choose who concluded that Owen was “feigning or malingering psychopathology to prevent the loss of life penalty.”
“Mr, Owen is conscious that the point out is executing him for the murders he committed and that he will bodily die as a outcome of the execution,” Circuit Decide James Colaw wrote in the June 4 ruling, following holding a hearing that included skilled testimony. “There is no credible evidence that in his existing psychological condition Mr. Owen believes himself unable to die or that he is being executed for any cause other than the murders he was convicted of.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Could 9 signed a demise warrant for Owen, 62, in the murder of Georgianna Worden, who was bludgeoned with a hammer and sexually assaulted in her Boca Raton property in May well 1984, in accordance to the loss of life warrant and court docket data.
Owen also was sentenced to dying in the March 1984 murder of 14-yr-aged Karen Slattery, who was babysitting at a Delray Beach household, in accordance to court files. Slattery was stabbed to death.
Colaw is a judge in the North Florida circuit that incorporates Florida Condition Prison.
If the execution is carried out Thursday, Owen would be the fourth Florida inmate place to death in much less than 4 months.
The point out on May possibly 3 executed Darryl Barwick in the 1986 murder of a woman in her Panama Town condominium. That adopted the April 12 execution of Louis Gaskin in the 1989 murders of a pair in Flagler County. The point out on Feb. 23 put to demise Donald David Dillbeck, who murdered a female in 1990 in the course of a carjacking in a Tallahassee mall parking large amount.
Dillbeck was the first particular person executed due to the fact Gary Ray Bowles was set to dying by lethal injection in August 2019 for a 1994 murder in Jacksonville.
