Florida executes death row inmate who abducted and murdered little girl
Bryan Jennings’ crimes were violent and disturbing. Strapped down insde a death chamber in Florida, his death was no different.
Bryan Jennings’ crimes were violent and disturbing. Strapped down insde a death chamber in Florida, his death was no different.
Jennings, 66, was convicted of the 1979 abduction and murder and six-year-old Rebecca Kunash after climbing through the window of her home in Florida’s Brevard County.
He raped and drowned the little girl in a canal not far from her home where police later found her body.
On Friday, at Florida State Prison, in front of just one family friend, Jennings was asked if he wanted to say any final words.
“No,” he shouted, according to media who reported on his execution, the 16th in Florida this year — a number that leads all other states.
After a final meal that included a cheeseburger, fries and soft drink, according to Florida Department of Corrections communications director Jordan Kirkland, Jennings would take his final breath.
ABC7 reports that as a cocktail of drugs entered Jennings’ system, “his chest heaved and his arms twitched for a few minutes” before “he laid still with his mouth open”.
“The execution took place without incident,” Mr Kirkland said. “There were no complications.”
Jennings, a former US Marine, was on leave on May 11, 1979 when he entered Rebecca’s room while her parents were in another room.
Police found shoe prints outside the home and fingerprints on the little girl’s windowsill, but could not find a match until Jennings was stopped in his car hours later. A witness has tipped off police that he fit the description of the man seen running from the Kunash home.
Jennings had tried numerous times to escape the death penalty, filing appeals at both state and federal level.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is overseeing a hard-line justice system in the state. He has authorised more executions in one year than another other Florida governor since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated.
Speaking on the matter earlier this month, he said: “There’s a saying: justice delayed is justice denied.
“We’re doing it to be able to bring justice to the victims’ families and I think it’s important. I’ve had people, you know, sometimes they’ll come to the office after and you can just see after decades the weight that’s kind of been lifted.
“They never fully had closure on, and these are really horrific crimes that are happening, so that’s really why we’re doing it.”
To put the Florida figure in some context, there have been five executions each in Alabama and Texas in the past year.
An Oklahoma man who had been scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday for a 2002 murder was meanwhile granted last-minute clemency by the state’s governor.
Tremane Wood, 46, was sentenced to death for the murder of Ronnie Wipf, 19, during a robbery.
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended clemency for Wood by a 3-2 vote on November 5, and Republican Governor Kevin Stitt granted it shortly before the execution was to be carried out at the state penitentiary in McAlester.
“After a thorough review of the facts and prayerful consideration, I have chosen to accept the Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation to commute Tremane Wood’s sentence to life without parole,” Stitt said in a statement.
“This action reflects the same punishment his brother received for their murder of an innocent young man and ensures a severe punishment that keeps a violent offender off the streets forever.”
Wood’s elder brother Jake, who died by suicide in prison in 2019, confessed to being the one who stabbed Wipf to death.
There have been 42 executions in the United States this year, the most since 2012, when 43 inmates were put to death.
An execution is also to be carried out on Friday in South Carolina, where Stephen Bryant, 44, is to die by firing squad.
Bryant pleaded guilty to killing three people in 2004, writing the message “catch me if u can” in the blood of one of his victims.
South Carolina has carried out two previous executions by firing squad this year.
Thirty-five of this year’s executions have been carried out by lethal injection, two by firing squad and five by nitrogenhypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.
The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.
President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes”.
— with AFP
Originally published as Florida executes death row inmate who abducted and murdered little girl
