Florida corrections officials killed Donald Dillbeck last Thursday. They did so despite the extensive evidence of his horrific sexual and physical abuse as a child, the brain damage he suffered from his mother’s alcohol abuse during her pregnancy, and his serious mental illness.
They did so despite the pleas of 29 evangelical Christian leaders, and hundreds of people around the country who signed petitions, called the governor, and marched in front of the death chamber at Florida State Prison, where he was killed by lethal injection.
Words can’t fully express the utter lack of humanity involved in the killings of people like Amber McLaughlin, Robert Fratta, Scott Eizember, Wesley Ruiz, Leonard Taylor, John Balentine, and Donald Dillbeck, all of whom have been killed by the state in the past eight weeks.
But, this piece by Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Maria DeLiberato, written on the night of the killing of Donald Dillbeck, eloquently puts into words who we are really killing when we execute our fellow Americans.
We hope you will read it.
