Florida worked hard to keep Davis alive

A diet, medicine, a wheelchair and special socks were part of the care Allen Lee Davis got leading up to his execution.

By SYDNEY P. FREEDBERG

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 8, 1999

Davis execution turns bloody AP breaking news

STARKE -- Barring a last-minute stay, Florida was scheduled to put convicted killer Allen Lee Davis to death at 7:01 this morning in an electrocution that would test the state's time-honored execution rituals.

Davis, 54, weighs 344 pounds, sometimes moves around in a wheelchair and is going deaf.

His lawyers say his disabilities have posed enormous challenges for the state while highlighting a strange and macabre contradiction: Correction officials for months have painstakingly sought to preserve Davis' health as they prepared to kill him.

In his final days, they put him on a diet. They installed grab bars so he wouldn't injure himself in the shower. They put in a special telephone so he could hear his visitors through the glass partition.

Even "Old Sparky," the state's electric chair, has been remade after 76 years to accommodate people of Davis' bulk.

The irony has not been lost on Davis, who maintained a sense of dark humor throughout his month in a tiny death-watch cell.

"They built the chair for me," he told his former lawyer Terri L. Backhus last weekend. "Now they have to test it."

As Florida locks up criminals for longer stretches, corrections officials must grapple with a growing number of older prisoners facing chronic illnesses and serious ailments. Some, like Davis, have degenerative joint disease and hypertension. Others have suffered strokes or diseases such as diabetes. And others show signs of mental illnesses, requiring round-the-clock medication.

Sixty-nine of Florida's 376 death-row inmates are older than 50, and the aging population will push those numbers -- and the cost of their care -- higher and higher.

Davis would become the fourth-oldest person to be executed in Florida since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 and the first since Jeb Bush became governor in January.

On Wednesday, Department of Corrections spokesman Eugene Morris said the staff planned to provide the "best care" for Davis until the end, while treating him like every other condemned inmate.

"We've got a set of procedures in place and that is what we follow," Morris said, "whether we're dealing with a female offender or someone who may be obese or anyone else."

There is little question as to Allen Lee Davis' guilt. He was convicted of beating to death 37-year-old Nancy Weiler of Jacksonville, hitting her 25 times with a revolver. Mrs. Weiler was pregnant. Davis then shot to death her daughters, Kristina, 9, and Katherine, 5.

There is no question as to Davis' longstanding eating disorder. When he arrived on death row 16 years ago, at 37, his keepers watched his cholesterol problem and put him on a low-fat diet of 1,500 calories a day.

It didn't work. Davis scarfed down chili dogs from the death-row canteen, and other inmates nicknamed him "Tiny." At one point, he ballooned to more than 400 pounds, but his weight eventually stabilized at about 330.

He barely could fit into his extra-large, state-issued orange pants and now he wears blue ones.

The bed in his cell was too narrow, so the Department of Corrections moved him to a cell for disabled inmates, according to Backhus, his former attorney. The new cell had a larger bed and grab bars to help him sit and stand.

Weight wasn't his only problem. As his appeals wended their way through the courts, Davis' hearing deteriorated.

Backhus said Davis, who preferred to be called Bud, coped with his obesity and deafness without complaint. "He came to terms with his environment," she said.

Even so, his lack of exercise, poor diet and smoking habit took a toll. A few years ago, Davis developed high blood pressure, which can lead to congestive heart failure. His medical records show the prison prescribed a hypertension pill to eliminate excess body fluid. He also was given a wheelchair and a pair of special stockings to reduce leg swelling.

But spokesman Morris said that Davis could still walk under his own power, "ever so slowly but he can walk."

Davis was diagnosed with osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease common in older people. It was mostly in his hips and knees. He could get in and out of bed by himself, but as time went on, it became more difficult because he lost upper body strength.

Then, according to prison records, Davis' hands began to shake. He lost the strength to hold a Styrofoam cup of coffee without spilling it. He also had trouble writing. The prison doctor ruled out Parkinson's disease but prescribed an anti-seizure medication to relieve his hand tremors.

It was in 1998 that Davis' appeals ran out and officials at Florida State Prison started worrying about whether their cracked, 74-year-old chair would accommodate someone that hefty. That's when they built the new chair.

But while the chair is new, much of the electrical system remains the same. And records show that in tests over the past year the chair's electrical breakers have failed at least four times, said Davis' lawyer, Martin McClain.

Similarly, a recording device used to gauge the system's electrical currents indicated a lower-than-required voltage during each of four executions carried out in March 1998, the last time the chair was used.

Because fatty tissue is more resistant to electrical current, Davis knows he could face a slow death.

When officers came to read Davis the death warrant on June 9, he saw it coming.

His crime was heinous, his case had gone on for 16 years, and he had already survived two death warrants, one in 1986 and one in 1992.

The victim's husband, Westinghouse executive John Weiler, at one point pleaded with then-Gov. Bob Graham to execute Davis.

"My personal life, career and all my dreams, including my home, are all gone," Weiler said at the time. "It is cruel and unusual punishment of the victims living and dead to know that this animal . . . still breathes."

The architecture of Florida State Prison, where Davis was transferred for his "death watch," is not designed for wheelchair access. Davis complained that they couldn't get the wheelchair through the door of his cell on X wing.

The first night, he fell out of his bunk, which was narrower than the one he had on death row.

He weighed 349 pounds, and one of his first visits was from a doctor. With a 350-pound load limit on the electric chair, doctors put him on a strict diet. He joked about finding a way to get cheese doodles.

The shower posed a problem. About two weeks ago, Davis lost his balance and fell while stepping up on the scale. He was rushed to get X-rays.

Corrections spokesman Morris wouldn't discuss Davis' medical condition, but he said the prison had installed three grab bars in the shower to help Davis steady himself.

On death watch, Davis mostly slept and read, books about military history and court briefs offering a detailed description of what could lay in store for him: smoke shooting from inmates' legs, or, worse yet, the mask.

A week ago, Davis went on Phase 2 of death watch -- a heightened level of security -- and contact visits stopped. When his brother visited, he spoke through the microphone in the glass but Davis couldn't hear him. Morris said the prison installed a telephone.

But there were few social visits. Davis declined to see some of his relatives and wouldn't talk to the Times.

"Mr. Davis has had very little to say to anybody," Morris said.

When Gainesville lawyer Susan Caryvisited Tuesday, the prisoner seemed tired, she said. He was pasty white and his eyes were red. He believed there would be no stay. "He feels as though he made his peace."

On Wednesday, Davis spent the afternoon sitting on his bunk, reading a western novel in his boxer shorts and watching the black-and-white television outside the bars.

Visits were planned with two of his lawyers and two brothers, and a prison chaplain was scheduled to shepherd him through the night.

-- Times researcher Cathy Wos and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Provenzano awaits ruling

On Tuesday night, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the execution of Provenzano, originally set for this morning. A short time later the Florida Supreme Court granted Provenzano a two-day delay. His execution was set for 7:01 a.m. Friday, a minute after the stay expires

Provenzano, condemned for the 1984 shooting of an Orlando bailiff, won his stay with a claim of insanity. But his allegation that the electric chair wouldn't work properly was rejected by both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court.

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