Double murderer's chilling silence upon facing execution after decades on death row

Samuel Lee Smithers, a 72-year-old murderer who killed two women nearly three decades ago, has been executed on death row. Smithers was administered the lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke following his conviction for two counts of first-degree murder.

He brutally murdered Christy Cowan and Denise Roach, leaving their severely beaten and strangled bodies in a pond in May 1996.

Smithers' execution marks the 14th death row execution in Florida this year, setting a record for any state in the US. The previous highest annual total of executions in Florida was eight, recorded in 2014.

Strapped to a table, the killer died within minutes of receiving the lethal injection, his breathing becoming laboured and experiencing minor convulsions. Despite a full witness gallery, he chose not to utter any last words or make a final statement at the prison.

Florida is set to carry out two more executions later this month and next. However, it took the state almost three decades to execute Smithers after his conviction for two counts of first-degree murder in 1999, the Mirror reports.

The court heard that Smithers had met Ms Cowan and Ms Roach on separate occasions in May 1996 at a motel in Tampa, Florida, where he paid them for sex. At the time, he was working on landscape maintenance of a 27-acre property, which included three ponds, in rural Plant City, Florida.

On 28 May 1996, the property owner, who had met Smithers at church where he served as a Baptist deacon, dropped by to find Smithers cleaning an axe in the garage, which he claimed was being used for tree trimming. The property owner spotted a pool of blood in the garage, and Smithers explained that someone must have killed a small animal there, according to court records.

The woman alerted the police, and a sheriff's deputy joined her later that day at the property. The blood had been cleaned up, but the deputy noticed drag marks leading to one of the ponds, according to court records.

That's where the authorities discovered the bodies of Ms Cowan and Ms Roach. Both women had been brutally beaten, strangled and left in the pond to die.

Last week, the Florida Supreme Court dismissed an appeal from Smithers. His lawyers had argued that his age should exempt him from execution under the US Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Despite Smithers potentially being one of the oldest people ever executed in Florida, the justices ruled that the elderly are not automatically exempt from the death penalty.

On Tuesday afternoon, the US Supreme Court rejected a final appeal without comment. Before Tuesday, a total of 35 men had been executed by court order this year in the US.