Terry Sims was executed by the State of Florida for the murder of volunteer Officer George Pfeill
According to court documents Terry Sims and two accomplices were robbing a pharmacy when former New York City police officer George Pfeill who was now working as a Seminole County Deputy Sheriff would walk in. The Officer and Terry exchanged gunfire and the Officer was struck and killed
Terry Sims would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Terry Sims would be executed by lethal injection on February 23 2000
Terry Sims execution was the first time the State of Florida used lethal injection
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When Was Terry Sims Executed
Terry Sims was executed on February 23 2000
Terry Sims Case
For the first time in its history, Florida has executed an inmate by injection. Terry Melvin Sims was given a lethal dose of chemicals shortly after 7 a.m. for the fatal shooting of a sheriff’s deputy during a drugstore robbery in the central Florida town of Longwood on Dec. 19, 1977. A prison doctor pronounced him dead at 7:10 a.m., the governor’s office said.
About two dozen anti-death penalty protesters, carrying candles and signs, marched in the chilly dawn outside Florida State Prison in rural north Florida during the execution. “I would like to see Mr. Bush here,” Michele Agans of St. Augustine said of Gov. Jeb Bush, who pushed the legislation allowing the condemned to choose between electrocution and lethal injection. “If he is ordering this man’s death, he should be in there watching.”
Sims, 58, ate a final meal of grouper, french fries, chef’s salad, Boston cream pie and Coca-Cola at about 4 a.m., sharing it with guards and Anthony B. Bryan, who is set to be executed Thursday and is being held in an adjoining cell. Sims, who was Jewish, also met with a rabbi, said Florida State Prison spokesman C.J. Drake. During the execution, a small group of Jews gathered outside to say mourning prayers.
Sims’ death marks the first time in almost 73 years that Florida has executed anyone by a method other than electrocution. Florida joined 34 other states that also use lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta denied his last appeals late Tuesday. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court rejected Sims’ claims of innocence and his challenge to the new method of execution. Last fall, Sims unsuccessfully fought the constitutionality of the electric chair.
The execution team was well-prepared, having practiced “well over a dozen times,” Drake said before the death. According to a protocol issued by prison officials, after his final meal, Sims was showered and dressed in his funeral suit. A prison doctor offered him Valium to calm his nerves. Out of view of the media and official witnesses, prison officials strapped Sims to a gurney in a small preparation room, placing an intravenous line into each of his arms and securing a heart monitor. An agent of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement observed, making sure the inmate wasn’t mistreated. The grim work was done out of the view of witnesses to protect the identity of members of the execution team. An anonymous executioner, wearing a black hood in keeping with prison tradition, pushed a plunger sending two syringes filled with sodium pentothal, an anesthetic in a dose strong enough to kill, into Sims’ arm. Next he injected a saline solution, followed by two syringes of a pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant to halt breathing. Another saline solution followed, then two syringes of the lethal potassium chloride. The executioner earned $150 for the job.
On the day of the 1977 slaying, George Pfiel, 55, who became a deputy after retiring from the New York City Police Department after 22 years, was off duty and had stopped to pick up a prescription for his wife, Florence. Sims and another man, Curtis Baldree were holding up the pharmacy, while two other men waited in a car. When Sims spotted Pfeil’s uniform, he opened fire. The fatally wounded deputy fired and hit Sims in the hip. Sims was not arrested until June 1978 after an attempted robbery in California. Sims steadfastly maintained his innocence.
The Florida Legislature, meeting in special session earlier this year, approved giving death row inmates the option of choosing lethal injection over the electric chair. Sims was the 45th Florida inmate to be executed since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that Florida’s death penalty law was constitutional.
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