FLORIDA---volunteer, execution

Sanchez-Velasco Executed For 1986 Slaying In Miami-Dade

A man who killed an 11-year-old girl and 2 fellow death row inmates was executed Wednesday after he dropped his appeals and volunteered to die.

 Rigoberto Sanchez-Velasco, 43, had been declared competent to make that decision Tuesday after he was examined by 3 state-appointed psychiatrists. He was pronounced dead from lethal injection at 9:39 a.m., said Katie Muniz, spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush.

After the psychiatrists' examination, Bush lifted a stay of execution he had issued one day earlier. Bush had issued stays for Sanchez-Velasco and serial killer Aileen Wuornos when an attorney argued that Wuornos wasn't competent to drop her appeals.

Death penalty opponents said allowing the inmates to drop their appeals is equivalent to state-assisted suicide. Dianne Abshire, a member of the Florida Support Group, which supplies emotional support to Florida death row inmates, has said both Wuornos and Sanchez-Velasco are insane.

 The death warrants for Wuornos and Sanchez-Velasco were signed while the state Supreme Court continued to review whether a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in an Arizona case would apply to Florida's 369 death row inmates.

 The high court ruled that only juries and not judges can sentence inmates to death. In Florida, juries make a recommendation to the trial judge, who imposed the sentence.

 Sanchez-Velasco was visited in the hours before his execution by a brother, 2 nephews and a priest.

 "I love you, everybody," Sanchez-Velasco said after he was strapped to the execution table. His mouth trembled slightly before the execution began at 9:31 a.m.

 He was sentenced to death in 1988 after confessing to the slaying of Katixa "Kathy" Ecenarro, the 11-year-old daughter of his live-in girlfriend in Hialeah, near Miami.

 While in prison awaiting execution, Sanchez-Velasco was convicted in the 1995 stabbing deaths of 2 other death row inmates - Edward B. "Mike" Kaprat III and Charles Street. He was given 2 15-year sentences.

 A psychiatric exam conducted Tuesday by doctors ruled Sanchez-Velasco "has no major psychiatric illness and understands the nature and effect of the death penalty and why it is being imposed upon him."

 Sanchez-Velasco was very calm and answered all the questions put to him by the psychiatrists, said Baya Harrison III, a lawyer appointed to represent the inmate.

 "He made it very clear to me that his mind is made up," Harrison said. "He was very coherent. He was cogent. He was courteous. He instructed me not to interfere with his execution."

 Sanchez-Velasco had argued in a handwritten filing with the Florida Supreme Court that he was legally convicted and wants to die. "I have killed people repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, even while being on death row," Sanchez-Velasco wrote.

 Sanchez-Velasco, who came to Miami from his native Cuba in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, was the 52nd person executed in Florida since the state resumed executions in 1976 and the 8th to die from lethal injection. Florida has executed 246 inmates since 1924.

Wuornos' execution, scheduled for Oct. 9, was temporarily stayed Monday in the wake of allegations by a Fort Lauderdale attorney that Wuornos wasn't competent to drop her appeals.

 Wuornos, 46, one of the nation's 1st known female serial killers, was convicted of fatally shooting 6 middle-aged men along Florida highways in 1989 and 1990. Her story has been portrayed in 2 movies, 3 books and an opera.

 On the Net: Florida Department of Corrections: http://www.myflorida.com

 Sanchez-Velasco becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Florida and the 52nd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1979.

 Sanchez-Velasco becomes the 55th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 804th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.