Florida Gov. DeSantis signs death warrant in 1992 murders

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Continuing to quickly order executions, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed a death warrant for a man convicted of killing three people in 1992 in Orange County.

Curtis Windom, 59, is scheduled to be executed Aug. 28 at Florida State Prison, according to the death warrant posted on the Florida Supreme Court website. Windom could be the 11th inmate executed this year in the state — a record-breaking pace.

The state is scheduled Thursday to execute Edward Zakrzewski for the 1994 murders of his wife and two children in Okaloosa County, and DeSantis has signed a death warrant to execute Kayle Barrington Bates on Aug. 19 for the 1982 murder of a woman in Bay County.

Zakrzewski’s attorneys have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to halt his execution. But if he is put to death by lethal injection, the state would break a modern-era record of eight executions in a year. That record was set in 1984 and 2014 and represents the period after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 after a U.S. Supreme Court decision halted executions four years earlier.

As with the earlier executions, the Windom death warrant and supporting documents were posted Tuesday on the Florida Supreme Court website without additional explanation from DeSantis.

But one of the documents, a letter from Attorney General James Uthmeier to DeSantis, outlined the Windom shootings on Feb. 7, 1992.

The document said Windom claimed that victim Johnnie Lee owed him $2,000. After finding out that Lee had won $114 at a greyhound track, Windom bought a .38-caliber revolver and ammunition.

“Minutes later, Windom drove his car next to where Lee was standing and shot Lee twice in the back,” the document said. “He then got out of the car and shot Lee two more times at close range as Lee lay on the ground.”

It said Windom then ran toward the apartment of what the document described as his “on-again-off-again girlfriend,” Valerie Davis, and fatally shot her. After Davis’ mother, Mary Lubin, learned that her daughter had been shot, she left work and was driving down the street.

“When she stopped at a stop sign, Windom approached her car, said something to her, and then shot her twice, killing her,” the Uthmeier document said. Another man, Kenneth Williams, was wounded in the shooting spree but survived.

The state this year has executed Michael Bell on July 15; Thomas Gudinas on June 24; Anthony Wainwright on June 10; Glen Rogers on May 15; Jeffrey Hutchinson on May 1; Michael Tanzi on April 8; Edward James on March 20; and James Ford on Feb. 13.