Not even pleas from the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops were enough to persuade Gov. Ron DeSantis to commute Duane Owen’s death sentence and spare his life. Continuing his zeal for state killing, DeSantis gave the go-ahead for Owen to be executed on June 15, despite credible evidence that Owen was not mentally competent.
“Tonight’s execution was the fourth in an execution spree fueled solely by political ambition. Tonight we killed a human being with schizophrenia, one of the most severe and debilitating mental illnesses a person can live with. How a society treats the sick and the broken says volumes more about the society than it says about the individual. We, the People of the State of Florida, are failing miserably,” Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Maria DeLiberato said in a statement released shortly after Owen was killed.
Owen was sentenced to death for two separate murders, Karen Slattery and Georgianna Worden, in 1984.
On May 22, DeSantis issued a hold on Owen’s execution to allow three psychiatrists to assess Owen’s mental competence. But about a week later, he lifted the stay, Flaglerlive reported, stating that the psychiatrists found that Owen “has the mental capacity to understand the nature of the death penalty and the reasons why it is to be imposed upon him.”
DeSantis’s enthusiasm for the death penalty continues unabated. One week after Owen was executed, DeSantis signed a warrant for James Barnes to be killed on August 3. If it proceeds, Barnes will be the fifth person killed by Florida this year.