FLORIDA:     (impending execution)

The Florida Supreme Court today refused to stay the execution of
convicted killer Bennie Demps, setting the stage for his death by
lethal injection at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

In a one-page order without comment, the state's highest court denied
Demps a chance at an evidentiary hearing. Demps, sentenced to death for
the 1976 murder of a fellow inmate, had asked the court to order a new
evidentiary hearing so he could present new documents that he says prove
his innocence.

Demps, who had previously been sentenced to death for the murder of two
people, had dodged the electric chair in 1972 when the Supreme Court
overturned death penalty statutes across the United States. He was given
a life term.

Then, several months after Florida had written a new death penalty
statute, prosecutors say that Demps was one of three men who took part in
the stabbing murder of alleged prison snitch Alfred Sturgis at Florida
State Prison. Demps was again sentenced to death for that crime.

A preliminary report?

Demps is basing most of his claims of innocence on a one-page report by a
chief prison inspector who wrote, following the stabbing, that Sturgis
had named James Jackson as the man who assaulted him. Jackson, Demps and
Harry Mungin were convicted of murdering Sturgis. Mungin and Jackson,
however, were given life prison terms.

Prosecutors say that the original report naming Jackson as the sole
assailant was preliminary. A full investigation revealed that Sturgis had
made a "dying declaration" naming Demps, Jackson and Mungin as his
attackers, prosecutors said.

The fact that Demps had previously been convicted of two murders prompted
the jury to hand him a death sentence, authorities say.

(source:  APB News)