Florida Executes Man for 1994 Rape, Murder

A man convicted of raping and killing a woman three decades ago after kidnapping her from a supermarket parking lot was executed Tuesday in Florida. Anthony Wainwright, 54, received a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was convicted in the April 1994 killing of 23-year-old Carmen Gayheart, a mother of two young children, in Lake City.

• The execution began about 6:10pm, the AP reports. Wainwright's shoulders shuddered a couple of times, and he blinked and took several deep breaths before becoming completely still at 6:14pm. Wainwright was pronounced dead at 6:22pm, according to Byran Griffin, a spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis. Wainwright made a final statement, but the words were inaudible from the witness room.

• He is the sixth person put to death in Florida this year, and another execution is scheduled for later this month.
• Richard Hamilton, the other man convicted in Gayheart's killing, was also sentenced to death. But he died on death row in January 2023 at the age of 59.
• Wainwright and Hamilton escaped from prison in North Carolina, stole a green Cadillac and burglarized a home the next morning, taking guns and money. Then they drove to Florida and when the Cadillac began to have problems in Lake City, they decided to steal another vehicle.

• They confronted Gayheart, a community college student, on April 27, 1994, as she loaded groceries into her blue Ford Bronco, according to court documents. They forced her into the vehicle at gunpoint and drove off. They raped her in the backseat and then took her out of the vehicle and tried to strangle her before shooting her twice in the back of the head, court filings say. They dragged her body several dozen yards from the road and drove off. The two men were arrested in Mississippi the next day after a shootout with police.
• The Supreme Court on Monday denied several of Wainwright's final appeals without comment. His lawyers filed a last-minute effort to seek a stay of execution Tuesday morning, focusing on claims that he was improperly barred from hiring a lawyer of his choice under state law. The high court denied his request in the evening.
• Maria David, Gayheart's sister, said she was "overcome with emotion" when she heard the governor had signed a death warrant for Wainwright. Her parents both died while waiting for justice to be served, she said. Over the years, she has kept a book where she put every court filing, from the initial indictment through the latest appeals. "I'm looking forward to getting the last pieces of paperwork that say he's been executed to put into the book and never having to think about Anthony Wainwright ever again," David said.
• Around the US, this is an unusually busy year for executions.

(More execution stories.)