Overview
- Dusty Ray Spencer is scheduled to receive a three‑drug lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison for the 1992 stabbing death of his wife, Karen Spencer.
- Spencer was convicted of first‑degree murder and related charges and was first sentenced to death in 1992 before a 1994 Florida Supreme Court order led to a resentencing and renewed death sentence.
- The Florida Supreme Court recently denied Spencer’s appeals, and his attorneys have filed a last appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court with no stay announced.
- Defense lawyers argue Spencer’s advanced age and liver disease raise a heightened risk of pain and suffering that would make execution cruel and unusual, and Florida’s protocol uses a sedative, a paralytic and a heart‑stopping drug.
- If carried out, the execution would be Florida’s ninth this year and occurs as the state maintains an expanded schedule of capital cases, including a July 14 execution already set for Dennis Sochor.