TALLAHASSEE — Persevering with to ramp up the tempo of executions in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday signed a dying warrant for a person convicted within the 1994 rape and homicide of a girl in downtown Orlando.
The warrant was signed for Thomas Gudinas, 51, who’s scheduled to be executed June 24 and may very well be the seventh inmate put to dying by deadly injection this yr. 5 males have been executed, and inmate Anthony Wainwright is scheduled to die June 10.
Gudinas was convicted within the Might 1994 homicide of Michelle McGrath, who had been out for an evening of leisure in downtown Orlando. McGrath was final seen alive about 2:45 a.m. within the courtyard of a nightclub and was believed to have been attacked as she went to her automotive in a car parking zone, in line with a 1995 sentencing order within the case.
McGrath’s physique was discovered about 7:30 a.m. in an alley and had been “savagely raped and severely crushed by the defendant with a blunt instrument,” then-Circuit Choose Belvin Perry Jr. wrote within the sentencing order, which was posted Friday on the Florida Supreme Courtroom web site with the dying warrant and different materials in regards to the case.
“The proof fairly clearly establishes that (the sufferer) didn’t meet a swift, merciful and painless dying,” the sentencing order stated. “The defendant on that night time confirmed a disposition to be violently damaging with out scruples or restraint. (The sufferer) was crushed and brought into an alleyway the place she spent her final minutes on this earth. Not solely was she crushed on this alleyway, however the defendant barbarically raped her.”
Gudinas was sentenced to dying in June 1995 after the trial had been moved to Collier County.
The Gudinas dying warrant and different paperwork have been posted on the Supreme Courtroom web site Friday with out remark from DeSantis — as has been the case with different dying warrants he has signed this yr.
However the state is clearly rising the tempo of executions, after it put to dying one inmate in 2024 and 6 in 2023. Because the dying penalty was reinstated in 1976 after a U.S. Supreme Courtroom resolution had halted it, probably the most executions carried out in Florida in a yr have been eight — which occurred in 1984 and 2014, in line with info on the Florida Division of Corrections web site.
The state this yr executed Glen Rogers on Might 15; Jeffrey Hutchinson on Might 1; Michael Tanzi on April 8; Edward James on March 20; and James Ford on Feb. 13.
DeSantis has additionally signed a dying warrant for Wainwright, who was convicted of kidnapping a girl in 1994 from a Winn-Dixie grocery store car parking zone in Lake Metropolis and raping and murdering her in rural Hamilton County. Wainwright’s attorneys have gone to the Florida Supreme Courtroom to attempt to halt the scheduled June 10 execution.
