Davis execution turns bloody

© Associated Press

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.

STARKE, Fla. (AP) -- Florida's first use of its new electric chair turned bloody Thursday with the execution of a 350-pound inmate for the murders of a woman and her two daughters 17 years ago.

Blood appeared to pour from the mouth and ooze from the chest of Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis as he was hit with 2,300 volts at 7:10 a.m., although the office of Gov. Jeb Bush said later that all the blood was from a nose bleed.

Davis

By the time Davis was pronounced dead at 7:15 a.m., the blood from his mouth had poured out onto the collar of his white shirt, and the blood on his chest had spread to about the size of a dinner plate, even seeping through the buckle holes on the leather chest strap holding him to the chair.

But despite how things seemed to witnesses of the execution, state officials said there was no bleeding from the mouth or chest.

"The only source of blood was from the nose," Bush spokesman Cory Tilley said from the governor's office in Tallahassee. "He had a nose bleed. Why that was will be in the autopsy."

The heavy bleeding was believed to be a first for 44 modern Florida executions.

Davis was brought into the death chamber in a wheelchair -- also believed to be a first.

Two prison officers helped him from the wheelchair into the electric chair shortly after 7 a.m., and he was strapped in, his head covered with a thick chin strap and leather flap.

Two muffled screams were heard from Davis just before the executioner threw the switch. Davis jolted back into the chair and clenched his fist, a sight common to Florida executions.

Then he started to bleed.

Davis was condemned for the May 11, 1982, slayings in Jacksonville of Nancy Weiler, who was three months pregnant, and her two daughters. He had gone to the house to rob them, telling a friend he needed money.

In their appeals up until the last day, Davis' lawyers argued that the voltage in the electric chair during four executions last year fell short of the amount needed to kill painlessly, especially for a man his size.

"Fat tissue is resistant to electricity," attorney Martin McClain told the Florida Supreme Court in late June.

But Tilley said after the execution that "nothing went wrong. The chair functioned as it was designed to function and we're comfortable that that worked."

Davis' was the first execution in a new wooden chair which replaced "Old Sparky," built by inmates in 1923 and first used the next year. But the electrical apparatus used for the actual executions was not changed.

Engineers reported the old electric chair's seat and left rear leg were cracked and that its left arm was weak and loose, likely to snap off.

Davis was the 44th person to be executed in Florida since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, and the 241st inmate to die by electrocution in Florida.

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