
Florida puts a man to death for killing 2 outside a bar, the 26th US execution this year
STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A man convicted of fatally shooting two people outside a Florida bar in 1993 as part of an attempted revenge killing was executed Tuesday evening, the 26th person put to death in the U.S. this year.
Michael Bernard Bell, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:25 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, said Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis. Bell was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murders of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith.
Bell’s final words were, “Thank you for not letting me spend the rest of life in prison.”
With Bell’s death, the number of executions in the U.S. surpassed last year’s total by one with more than five months left on the calendar. The number of executions has largely trended downward nationally this century after peaking with 98 in 1999. From 1995 to 2006, there was an average of about 67 executions per year.