STARKE – A man convicted of raping and murdering a woman near a central Florida bar was scheduled to be executed Tuesday evening.
Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, was due to receive a fatal injection at a Florida prison near Stark for the May 1994 murder of Michelle McGrath.
Gudinas will be the seventh person in Florida this year, with the eighth scheduled for next month. The state executed six people in 2023, but last year it ran one.
A total of 23 men have died in the US this year. Since 2015, the most planned executions have been set for 2025.
Florida executed more people this year than any other state, while Texas and South Carolina each placed fourth and second. Alabama has one of three: Oklahoma 2, Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana and Tennessee. Mississippi is scheduled to join other states on Wednesday in its first run since 2022.
Despite the increasing frequency of executions this year, Ted Vehman, a spokesman for the Department of Amendment, said there was no significant operational tension.
“Our staff is doing a great job of keeping up to the pace of these executions,” Veerman said Tuesday. “And we experience these in a professional way.”
McGrath was last seen at a bar called Barbarera in Barbarera before 3am on May 24, 1994. Her body showed signs of serious trauma and sexual assault, and was found hours later in an alley next to a nearby school.
Gudinas was at the same bar as his friend the night before, but they later testified that he had left without him. School employees who discovered McGrath’s body later identified Gudinas as a man who had fled to the area some time ago. Another woman also identified Gudinas as the person who chased her into her car the night before and threatened to assault her.
Gudinas was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995.
Gudinas woke up at 4:45am on Tuesday, the Department of Corrections spokesman said. He had one visitor, his mother. He did not meet with the spiritual advisor.
For his final meal, Gudinas had pepperoni pizza, fries and soda, officials said.
Gudinas’ attorneys have appealed to the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
The lawyers argued that evidence related to “lifelong mental illness” in their state would exempt Gudinas from dying. The Florida Supreme Court last week refused to appeal, finding that case law protecting people with intellectual disabilities from enforcement does not apply to individuals with other forms of mental illness or brain damage.
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Meanwhile, the federal filing argues that the free discretion to sign the Florida governor’s death warrant violated the death row inmate’s constitutional right to the legitimate process, leading to an arbitrary process that determines who lives and who dies. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon refused to apply for Gudinas’s enforcement stay.
David Fischer and Freida Frisaro, Associated Press
