Bennie Demps (FL) b/? 
May 31, 2000...7:00am (EST) 
"I thought that was great. A lot of them thought they would get life. They didn't." Gordon Oldham remembers his time as district attorney in Florida when he had sent more than 50 people to death row. One of them was Bennie Demps. 
In 1971, Bennie was sentenced to death for murdering two persons during a robbery. When capital punishment was declared unconstitutional in 1972, his sentence was commuted to life in prison.  Two years later, however, Bennie again found himself on trial for his life. 
Together with two other prisoners Bennie was involved in the stabbing of Alfred Sturgis. Although it is clear that Bennie was holding Sturgis while another inmate stabbed him, he was the only one of the three who received a death sentence.  A number of other questionable circumstances exist in Bennie's case as well: 

-There is evidence that Mr. Hathaway, another prisoner and the key witness for the prosecution, is mentally ill. 

-Another eye-witness testified under oath that Hathaway was lying but later he withdrew his testimony after the state reduced  his sentence. 

-Bennie was without legal repressentation for many years as a result of the de-funding of Florida's Capital Resource Center in 1995. 

-During his life Bennie was also influenced by a drug addiction which, according to a psychologists, "may have resulted in the kind of brain damage suggested by the current test results."