CBS News Miami reported that Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew the death warrant for William Lee Thompson in a Thursday afternoon letter to Florida State Prison Warden Randall Polk, stopping the 74-year-old inmate’s scheduled Tuesday execution.
Thompson had been set to die hours after fellow inmate James Robertson. DeSantis signed Thompson’s warrant on Sept. 11. The Thursday letter gave no stated reason for the withdrawal.
The move lands amid counsel claims of dementia and cognitive decline, a governor-ordered psychiatric review, a denied stay request at the Florida Supreme Court, and a separate federal lawsuit seeking medical care. Robertson, 63, remained scheduled for the 2008 killing of his cellmate Frank Hart at Charlotte Correctional Institution.
Less than a week after signing the Sept. 11 warrant, DeSantis issued executive order 26-192. The order commissioned a three-member panel of psychiatrists to examine Thompson’s mental condition.
The panel was directed to conduct its examination on Oct. 1 and report findings the next day. The order recorded the defense position in direct terms.
DeSantis wrote that counsel for Thompson asserted a neuropsychologist met with the inmate on Sept. 15 and reached a firm conclusion about competence.
"Counsel for William Lee Thompson asserts that a neuropsychologist met with Mr. Thompson on (Sept. 15) and that said neuropsychologist 'opined that Mr. Thompson meets the criteria for insanity due to his dementia and significant cognitive decline as Mr. Thompson lacks the mental capacity to understand the fact of his impending execution and the reason for it'."
State law requires evaluation when counsel raises an insanity claim of this kind. Grace Hanna, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said an evaluation occurred last week. She said officials never released those findings and never explained the warrant withdrawal.
"In accordance with state law, he underwent an evaluation last week. Officials never released the findings or explained today's withdrawal."
Hanna also described Thompson’s reported mental state after the warrant was signed. Counsel had notified the governor of physical and mental conditions, including dementia and heart failure.
"He did not know where he was, stated that 'Bush' was the president, and, at times, did not even recognize that he had been sentenced to death."
Thompson’s lawyers also filed a federal lawsuit seeking care for medical conditions. Authorities have not publicly detailed the status or caption of that suit beyond the fact of its filing.
Hours before DeSantis sent the Thursday letter, the Florida Supreme Court denied Thompson’s motion for a stay. The sequence left the executive withdrawal as the act that removed the Tuesday date.
Investigators and courts have not released public results from the Oct. 1 panel examination in the material provided. Officials have not said whether the panel’s work, the earlier evaluation, the federal filing, or another factor drove the decision. DeSantis did not state a reason in the letter to Warden Polk.
Thompson’s case traces to March 30, 1976, in a Dade County motel room. Thompson, Rocco Surace, Barbara Savage, and a woman identified as Ivester were staying there. The women were instructed to call their families for money. Ivester obtained $25.
She was beaten with a chain-link belt, assaulted with a nightstick and a chair leg, and burned with cigarettes and lighters. After a second attempt to get money, the beating continued until she died of internal bleeding and multiple injuries. Savage later testified she feared for her life if she tried to leave during the attack.
Thompson was arrested two days later. On June 17, 1976, after changing his plea to guilty on first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery, he received a death sentence.
In 1977, the Florida Supreme Court reversed the judgments and required the trial court to allow Thompson to withdraw the guilty plea and proceed to trial. In September 1978, Thompson again pled guilty to all charges and again received a death sentence, with a majority of the jury in support.
In 1982, Gov. Bob Graham signed a death warrant. A stay from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida halted it. In 1987, after the Florida Supreme Court stayed a warrant signed by Gov. Bob Martinez, the court also vacated the death sentence.
At a 1989 resentencing, the jury voted 7-5 to recommend death. The trial court imposed the death penalty. The state Supreme Court upheld the sentence on direct appeal. Two later postconviction challenges at the trial court level were rejected.
Surace had pled guilty to kidnapping, rape, and murder. His initial death sentence was reversed. At retrial he was convicted of second-degree murder and received a life sentence. He died in prison on Nov. 14, 1993.
Thompson at one point testified claiming responsibility in the Surace matter. The long procedural history left him under a final death sentence when DeSantis signed the Sept. 11 warrant.
Robertson was scheduled to be executed hours before Thompson for the 2008 murder of cellmate Frank Hart at Charlotte Correctional Institution. The Thursday action applied only to Thompson’s warrant.
Hanna pointed to growing international attention on the death penalty after Tennessee’s failed effort to execute Christa Pike on Sept. 30. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted executions in that state and ordered an independent investigation. In May, Tennessee had halted another execution when an adequate intravenous line could not be found.
Hanna framed Thompson’s poor health and compromised veins as a scenario that looked realistic in Florida. Those remarks came from a death-penalty opponent group and remain advocacy claims, not findings by Florida officials.
DeSantis withdrew a lawful death warrant without a public explanation in the letter itself. Counsel alleged insanity tied to dementia and significant cognitive decline. A neuropsychologist opinion was asserted for Sept. 15. A statutory evaluation occurred last week, per Hanna. A three-member psychiatric panel was ordered to examine Thompson on Oct. 1 and report the next day.
Officials never released the evaluation findings, Hanna said. No public results have been released about the panel’s conclusions in the available material. The Florida Supreme Court had already denied a stay. A federal lawsuit seeking medical care remains described only at a high level.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether competency, medical status, procedural timing, or another ground produced the withdrawal. The original crime, the repeated guilty pleas, the 7-5 jury recommendation, and the upheld 1989 death sentence stand as the adjudicated record that placed Thompson on the warrant list.
Capital judgment demands both finality for victims and strict adherence to competence rules before the state carries out a sentence. When a governor pulls a warrant days after the state’s high court refuses a stay, the public is entitled to clear findings, not silence.
