On January 23, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a dying warrant for the execution of Dillbeck, 59, who was sentenced to dying in 1991 for the homicide of Faye Vann in Tallahassee. In 1990, Dillbeck stabbed the 44-year-old lady to dying in a shopping center parking zone after escaping from custody days earlier whereas serving a life sentence within the capturing dying of Florida police officer Lynn Hall.
The execution would mark the primary since 2019 for Florida’s greater than 300 inmates on dying row.
According to the warrant, Dillbeck’s execution is scheduled for February 23 at 6 p.m.
Dillbeck, initially from Texas, was 15 when he shot and killed a Lee County Sheriff’s deputy in Fort Myers Beach on April 11, 1979. The highschool dropout and runaway from Indiana was sitting inside a stolen automobile at a closed park on the seashore when Hall responded to a suspicious individual criticism and commenced questioning Hall. Dillbeck reportedly ran away, and Hall chased him on foot and caught him.
In the following battle, Dillbeck grabbed Hall’s gun and fatally shot him. He was sentenced to life in jail for the homicide in June 1979.
In June 1990, Dillbeck escaped custody whereas at an offsite vocational program at an elementary faculty in northern Florida. In a Tallahassee shopping center parking zone, he robbed and fatally stabbed Vann, who was ready in her automobile alone as her household shopped. Dillbeck stole the automobile however crashed it close by and was apprehended by police.
Dillbeck was convicted of first-degree homicide, armed theft, and armed housebreaking and sentenced to die the next yr in an 8-4 jury suggestion.
At the sentencing, he instructed the decide, “I’m actually sorry for what occurred. I want it did not, not as a result of I’m standing right here, however as a result of it occurred. I’m asking for a life sentence, not for my sake, however for my dad and mom’ sake.” Dillbeck’s adoptive dad and mom cried on the witness stand, saying the boy they adopted at 6 years outdated had been “mind broken and abused,” in accordance with a March 1991 Gainesville Sun article.
In the years following Dillbeck’s 1991 trial, he and his attorneys pleaded for mercy, claiming he suffered mind injury from the abuse he confronted as a toddler from his alcoholic mom. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the State of Indiana took custody of Dillbeck when he was 4.
“The penalty the state is in search of is an abomination. The remainder of the world appears to know that,” assistant public defender Randy Murrell argued on the time.
“The solely abomination within the courtroom in the present day is Donald Dillbeck,” responded assistant state legal professional Tom Kirwin, who was in search of the dying penalty.
Neither Dillbeck nor his legal professional has responded to requests for remark. New Times was unable to succeed in the household or family members of Vann or Hall, the namesake of Lynn Hall Memorial Park on Fort Myers Beach.
In August 2019, Gary Ray Bowles, who murdered six males in 1994, was the final to die by execution in Florida.
The final dying warrant DeSantis signed earlier than Dillbeck’s was in September 2019 for the execution of James Daily, who was convicted of the 1985 killing of 14-year-old Shelly Boggio –– nevertheless, court docket challenges delayed the execution. Though the Florida Supreme Court upheld Dailey’s conviction and sentence in 2021, the execution was by no means rescheduled.
DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin attributed the hole between executions to the governor being busy coping with the COVID-19 pandemic for a lot of his first time period.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP), a statewide grassroots group aiming to finish the dying penalty in Florida, wrote an announcement iopposingDillbeck’s scheduled execution, saying his childhood was marked with “extreme trauma” and abuse. The group famous that DeSantis signed the warrant the identical day it requested supporters to thank Florida legislators for sponsoring laws to compensate exoneree Robert DuBoise, who spent a number of many years wrongfully incarcerated in Florida.