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BENNIE DEMPS WAS put to death for the fatal
stabbing of Alfred Sturgis, who was attacked in his cell. The dying
Sturgis told a prison guard that Demps and another inmate had held him
down while a third inmate stabbed him.
“They
have used me as the poster boy of the death penalty,” Demps said Tuesday.
“I am an innocent man, wrongly convicted in this murder.”
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Demps, 49, said he
was being executed because he had cheated the executioner in a 1971 double
murder. Demps was sent to death row for killing two people who were
inspecting a citrus grove where he had fled with a stolen safe in 1971.
His sentence was reduced after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out capital
punishment nationwide.
In July 1976, the
nation’s high court upheld Florida’s new death law. Sturgis was killed two
months later.
The Florida Supreme Court in
1981 upheld Demps’ death sentence in Sturgis’ slaying, rejecting his
argument that it should be overturned because the other two inmates were
given life sentences. Judges noted that the other two had no prior murder
convictions.
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Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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