Florida Executes Woman's Killer

A man convicted of abducting a woman from a Florida Panhandle insurance office and killing her received a lethal injection Tuesday evening in the state's 10th execution this year. Kayle Bates, 67, was pronounced dead at 6:17pm following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke under a death warrant signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the AP reports. The execution extended Florida's record for total executions in a single year, and two more are planned in the next month.

Bates was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, and attempted sexual battery in the June 14, 1982, killing of Janet White in Bay County in the Florida Panhandle. The woman's husband, Randy White, was one of the witnesses to Tuesday's execution. According to court documents, Bates abducted Janet White from the insurance office where she worked, took her into woods behind the building, attempted to rape her, fatally stabbed her, and tore a diamond ring from her finger. Attorneys for Bates had filed appeals with the Florida Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court, as well as a federal lawsuit claiming DeSantis' process for signing death warrants was discriminatory. The lawsuit was recently dismissed by a judge.

The Florida Supreme Court recently denied Bates' pending claims, including arguments that evidence of organic brain damage had been inadequately considered during his second penalty phase. The court responded that Bates has had three decades to raise these claims. And the US Supreme Court rejected Bates' last appeal Tuesday. Veterans groups had been pressing for a reprieve, per USA Today; Bates was a former Florida National Guardsman. He became the fourth veteran executed in Florida this year. "We can never be a veteran friendly state when our leader is signing off on their deaths at the hands of the State," said a letter to DeSantis that was signed by 130 veterans.