A man who killed two women nearly three decades ago has been put to death on death row. Samuel Lee Smithers, aged 72, received a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke after being found guilty of two first-degree murder charges. He murdered Christy Cowan and Denise Roach, leaving their bodies severely beaten and strangled in a pond in May 1996.
Smithers became the 14th person executed on death row in Florida this year, setting a record for any state in the US. The highest previous annual number of executions in Florida was eight in 2014.
During the execution, Smithers, restrained on a table, passed away shortly after the injection as his breathing became labored and he experienced mild convulsions. Despite the witness gallery being full, he chose not to make any final statements.
Florida is scheduled to carry out two more executions later this month and next. It took the state almost thirty years to execute Smithers after his 1999 conviction for two counts of first-degree murder.
Court proceedings revealed that Smithers met Ms. Cowan and Ms. Roach separately in May 1996 at a motel in Tampa, Florida, to pay for sex. At the time, he was working on landscaping a 27-acre property in rural Plant City, Florida, which included three ponds.
On May 28, 1996, the property owner, who knew Smithers from church where he served as a Baptist deacon, discovered him cleaning an axe in the garage. Smithers claimed he was trimming tree limbs, but the owner noticed blood in the garage. Law enforcement was contacted, and a sheriff’s deputy found drag marks leading to one of the ponds where the bodies of Ms. Cowan and Ms. Roach were found.
An appeal from Smithers was denied by the Florida Supreme Court last week, arguing that his age should exempt him from execution under the US Constitution’s cruel and unusual punishment clause. However, the court ruled that age does not categorically exclude individuals from the death penalty.
The US Supreme Court rejected Smithers’ final appeal without comment on Tuesday afternoon. Before this decision, a total of 35 men had been executed through court orders in the US this year.