An inmate whose execution
was stayed in December by a Florida Supreme Court busy with
presidential election disputes was executed by lethal injection
Thursday at Florida State Prison.
Robert Glock, 39, was
pronounced dead at 6:28 p.m., said Katie Baur, spokeswoman for Gov.
Jeb Bush.
The U.S. Supreme Court
denied Glock's final appeals Thursday morning. The applications
were filed with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who referred them to
the full court. There was no dissent in the denials.
Glock was convicted in the
1983 kidnap-slaying of Sharilyn Johnson Ritchie, 34, who taught
home economics.
Defense attorney Terri
Backhus of Tampa said Wednesday that she spoke frequently with her
client as the execution time drew near. He was hoping for another
favorable court ruling and was "of course concerned, ... but
he's actually been in good spirits."
Glock spent his final days
visiting with family members.
Ritchie, who taught at
Palmetto High School in Manatee County, was kidnapped at gunpoint
at a Bradenton shopping mall on Aug. 16, 1983.
Glock and Carl Puiatti, 38,
who is on death row, stole her wedding ring and forced her to
withdraw $100 from a bank. They then drove her in her car north 60
miles to Pasco County.
They released her in an
orange grove near Dade City, handing her a sun visor, her purse and
her husband's baseball mitt.
They started to drive way,
but then decided to kill her. They shot her, then came back and
shot her again. She managed to walk about 10 yards before
collapsing for the last time.
When her body was found,
she was clutching the leather mitt to her chest.
5 days later, the two men
were stopped by a New Jersey state trooper. They confessed to the
murder and in 1984 Circuit Judge Wayne Cobb sentenced them to death.
Backhus argued in appeals
that Glock was unfairly barred from appealing the standard jury
instructions given at his trial because his 1st appeal team,
heeding clear rulings by the Florida Supreme Court that the
instructions were constitutional, hadn't appealed them.
The U.S. Supreme Court
later found the instructions unconstitutional.
Glock becomes the 1st
condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Florida and the
51st overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1979.
Glock becomes the 3rd
condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the
686th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
