http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/711370.html

DEATH PENALTY

Execution set for killer in 1983 case

Gov. Charlie Crist has signed the death warrant for Wayne Tompkins, who has twice avoided execution for the 1983 slaying of a Tampa teenager. His is scheduled to die Oct. 28.

BY BRENT KALLESTAD

ASSOCIATED PRESS

TALLAHASSEE -- An execution date was set Thursday -- for the third time in two decades -- for a man who murdered a Tampa teenager more than 25 years ago.

Wayne Tompkins is now scheduled to be executed Oct. 28 at Florida State Prison for the March 1983 slaying of Lisa DeCarr, the 15-year-old daughter of his girlfriend.

Tompkins was in the Pasco County Jail on unrelated rape and kidnapping charges when DeCarr's body was discovered under her mother's home 14 months after her disappearance.

Tompkins' third death warrant was signed by Gov. Charlie Crist. Through a series of appeals, Tompkins avoided execution on previous warrants signed by former Florida Govs. Bob Martinez in 1989 and Jeb Bush in 2001.

Tompkins, 51, came within two weeks of being executed in 2001 before his sentence was set aside on the basis that his trial judge was predisposed to the death penalty.

It was the third death warrant signed by Crist, who promised to resume executions beginning with those inmates who he believed committed the most heinous murders.

Florida suspended executions for almost 18 months after a botched execution in December 2006, when it took 34 minutes for inmate Angel Diaz to die, more than twice the average time, after needles carrying lethal injection chemicals missed their mark.

Richard Henyard, 34, died in 10 minutes from a lethal injection Sept. 23 for the murder of two young girls in Eustis after he raped and shot their mother.

Mark Schwab was executed July 1 for the 1991 murder of an 11-year-old Cocoa boy, just a month after Schwab was released early from a prison sentence for raping a 13-year-old boy. Schwab, 39, died 12 minutes after receiving the ''death cocktail'' of sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride used in the states that execute by lethal injection.

Associated Press reporters Terry Spencer, Matt Sedensky and Brendan Farrington contributed to this report.