Inmate claims injection bungled

Bennie Demps' execution is delayed while a vein is found. Before death, he says: "They butchered me.''

By SHELBY OPPEL

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 8, 2000

STARKE -- Florida's third execution by lethal injection -- a method chosen this year after a series of botched electrocutions -- went awry Wednesday when executioners struggled to insert a needle in the vein of a killer.

The execution of three-time convicted murderer Bennie Demps was delayed 33 minutes while Department of Corrections officials worked out of public view to find what they called a "suitable vein."

When the brown curtain parted to reveal Demps on a blue-sheeted gurney, he began a six-minute diatribe, saying technicians tried to place a needle in his legs and arms.

"They butchered me back there. I was in a lot of pain," Demps told witnesses gathered behind a window.

"I ask that you call for an investigation into this matter. . . . I was bleeding profusely back there. They started at 5:40 p.m. They cut me in the groin at 6 p.m. At 6:20 p.m., they cut me in the leg," Demps said before a fatal combination of drugs began to flow into his left arm.

By 6:53 p.m., Demps was pronounced dead, 22 years after he was sentenced to die for the 1976 murder of Alfred Sturgis, a 23-year-old inmate serving a life sentence at Florida State Prison in Starke.

After the execution, Florida State Prison Warden James Crosby said: "It was necessary to do a surgical procedure to find a suitable vein."

Crosby would not elaborate on the surgery or respond to questions about how many times and where on Demps' body prison officials attempted to insert the intravenous needle. He also attributed part of the delay to prison officials waiting to be sure that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied a hearing of Demps' latest appeal.

Dr. David Thomas, the Department of Correction's director of health services, issued a statement that said that the executioners followed protocol and that the execution "was carried out in a professional manner."

"The inmate suffered no undue discomfort," Thomas said.

Demps' death was the latest in a series of troubled executions in Florida. Last July, 344-pound inmate Allen Lee Davis bled during what may well have been the last execution in Florida's electric chair. It was the third botched execution in nine years in Florida.

Before he died Wednesday evening, Demps, a 49-year-old Vietnam veteran, angrily accused the court and prison systems and Gov. Jeb Bush of mishandling the investigation into Sturgis' 1976 murder. Three men were convicted in the fatal stabbing, but only Demps was sent to death row.

"Gov. Bush, you have done what you said you would never do and that's kill an innocent man," Demps said.

His eyes grew red and watery and voice softened as he thanked his attorneys, his mother, Inez Riley, and his wife, Tracy, whom he met over the Internet four years ago. Relatives of condemned prisoners are not allowed to watch them die; Tracy Demps spent the hour in a grassy lot across a state highway from the prison.

"Most of all, I want to thank my wife, who gave me the best years of my life," he said.

Demps then referred to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' famous claim during the Anita Hill hearings that he was a victim of a "high-tech lynching."

"This, sir, is a low-tech lynching by poison. You are an insult to the legacy of Thurgood Marshall," Demps said.

"There's a cut in my leg that they sutured back up," Demps said at one point.

Demps, who converted to Islam in prison, spoke his last words in Arabic. At 6:40 p.m., a microphone hanging from the death chamber ceiling was shut off. Within a minute, Demps' eyes fluttered and closed, while his chest continued to heave. By 6:42 p.m., he appeared to no longer be breathing.

The injection Demps received is a combination of chemicals designed to render the condemned person unconscious, cause paralysis and then induce a massive coronary. The first drug is sodium pentothal, an anesthetic, followed by a muscle relaxant that slows breathing. Last comes potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

The unseen executioner, a private citizen who was paid $150 in cash, triggered the flow of chemicals from behind a one-way mirror. Demps' execution was the first during which the executioner did not wear a hood, a corrections spokeswoman said.

George Schaefer, Demps' Gainesville attorney, said he would try Wednesday night to contact State Attorney Rod Smith, who has jurisdiction in Starke, to ask for an investigation.

Schaefer disputed Crosby's explanation that the delay was caused partly by uncertainty over the Supreme Court's ruling. Schaefer held a faxed copy of the ruling he received from Crosby's secretary at 5:25 p.m., 30 minutes before the 30 civilian witnesses, reporters and prison officials were led into the viewing room.

"I'm very concerned because there was a substantial delay and (Demps) complained about the procedure. . . . He said, "Just look at the body and you'll see what they did to me,"' Schaefer said.

Demps said in an interview Tuesday that he was framed for Sturgis' murder so that he could be executed for two other, earlier murders. In 1971, Demps and another man had broken into a home, stolen a safe and fled into a Lake County orange grove. A real estate agent, R.N. Brinkworth, wandered into the grove, showing property to a Connecticut couple.

Demps and the other man shot the woman, Celia Puhlick, and forced all three into the trunk of a car. They fired machine guns through the closed trunk, killing Brinkworth and Puhlick and injuring Puhlick's husband, who survived to identify Demps.

Demps received two death sentences for the murders, but in 1972, the Supreme Court halted the death penalty across the nation. Demps' sentences, along with those of every person on death row, were reduced to life.

In 1976, two months after the Supreme Court upheld Florida's new death penalty law, authorities say Demps killed Sturgis.

Six female and nine male civilian witnesses watched Demps' execution, including Schaefer and Rabbani Muhammad, his spiritual adviser. Prison officials could not say whether any of the witnesses were related to Sturgis, Brinkworth or Puhlick.

Demps was visited by his wife, mother and Muhammad on Wednesday morning. During one of the visits, he was allowed to hug and kiss both women twice and to hold their hands. About 11 a.m., he ate his final meal, which included barbecue chicken and beef, french fries, salad, ice cream, a mango and banana pudding.

For the execution, he wore a short-sleeved white dress shirt, dress pants and shoes bought for him for about $100 by the Department of Corrections, said spokeswoman Debra Buchanan. He also wore a white knit cap.

The Alachua County medical examiner will perform an autopsy.

The execution went forward despite a last-minute request for clemency from Pope John Paul II.

A letter from Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, the papal nuncio, urged the governor to spare Demps' life.

"His Holiness counts on your authority to have a life spared by commuting this sentence with a gesture of mercy which would certainly contribute to the promotion of a culture of life and of non-violence in the freedom-loving society of the United States," Montalvo wrote.

Demps was the 47th person to be put to death in Florida since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in 1976 and the fourth to be executed since Bush took office in early 1999. The 48th, Thomas Provenzano, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. June 20.

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