A 74-year-old Florida inmate has become the oldest person executed in the state’s modern history after being put to death for the 1992 murder of his wife.
Dusty Ray Spencer was executed at Florida State Prison near Starke and was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. on Thursday, June 25, after receiving a three-drug lethal injection.
Before the execution was carried out, he was asked if he wanted to give any final statement.
“Sorry, sorry to the family. Into thy hands I commit my spirit and my soul. I’m on my way, Lord. I’m on my way. Amen.”
According to the Tampa Bay Times, Spencer’s last meal consisted of pizza, french fries and a milkshake.
People on death row are typically allowed one final meal ahead of an execution, although Texas ended special last meal requests in 2011.
That policy change followed the case of Lawrence Russell Brewer, a condemned prisoner who asked for an enormous final spread that included two chicken-fried steaks, three fajitas, a meat-lovers’ pizza, a full pound of barbecue, and a triple meat bacon cheeseburger.
When prison officials prepared the meal, Brewer ultimately declined to eat any of it.
Florida places tighter rules on those requests, with inmates restricted to a $40 spending cap and meals needing to be sourced locally.
Spencer may now hold the record as the oldest inmate executed in Florida’s modern history, but he is not the oldest person put to death in the US in recent history.
That distinction belongs to Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who was 83 when he was executed in Alabama in 2018.
Moody had been sentenced for the 1989 letter bomb killing of Robert S. Vance and civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson.
Spencer had originally been arrested after attacking his wife in December 1991, when he choked her and threatened to kill her. While he was in jail, prosecutors said he phoned her and warned he would
‘finish what he started’
when he got out.
Karen Spencer was later stabbed to death in January 1992.
Although Spencer initially received a death sentence, the Florida Supreme Court later ordered a new sentencing hearing, ruling that the lower court had
‘mishandled evaluating aggravating and mitigating circumstances.’
He was sentenced to death again the following year.
Another 74-year-old prisoner, Dennis Sochor, is also scheduled for execution in Florida this year. Sochor was convicted of killing a woman he had met only hours earlier at a New Year’s Eve party in 1982.
Across the United States, death row inmates spend an average of about 20 years in prison before execution, often because of
‘legal challenges, high costs, and difficulties in procuring execution drugs.’