Bennie Demps was executed by the State of Florida for a prison murder
According to court documents Bennie Demps and two other inmates would stab to death Alfred Sturgis at Florida State Prison. At the time of the murder Bennie was serving a double life sentence for two murders that took place during a robbery
Bennie Demps would be convicted and sentenced to death
Bennie Demps would be executed by lethal injection on June 7 2000
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When Was Bennie Demps Executed
Bennie Demps was executed on June 7 2000
Bennie Demps Case
Claims to Be Victim of Prison Frame-Up — A convicted killer who dodged the electric chair when the Supreme Court overturned death penalty statutes in 1972 now has a new date with the executioner — this time for taking part in the murder of an alleged prison snitch. But Bennie Demps, back on death row again since 1978 and scheduled to die by lethal injection June 7, isn’t going quietly to the death chamber. He claims he is the victim of a prison frame-up and an unscrupulous prosecutor who withheld evidence. Demps also said a report from the Department of Corrections named another man as the inmate’s only killer. Prosecutors are scoffing at his claims, noting that the courts have rejected all of his appeals and that all evidence points to him as one of the killers. Demps was scheduled to die Wednesday, but the Florida Supreme Court gave him a temporary stay of execution, until June 7 at 5 p.m. A hearing will be held Monday that will likely decide whether Demps lives or dies. His lawyers are asking the high court to order an evidentiary hearing on the basis of newly discovered evidence that they believe could help prove the condemned man’s innocence.
Fingered by ‘dying declaration’
Demps, James Jackson and Harry Mungin were convicted of the Sept. 7, 1976, stabbing death of Alfred Sturgis at Florida State Prison. Sturgis, serving a life term for murder, was found in his cell, bleeding from multiple stab wounds. Prosecutors and prison officials say that while he was being taken to the hospital, Sturgis told two guards in a “dying declaration” that fellow inmates Demps, Jackson and Mungin attacked him. Authorities believe that Demps and Mungin held Sturgis while Jackson repeatedly plunged a homemade prison knife into his chest. At the time, Demps was serving a double life sentence for murdering two people in Lake County. He was originally sentenced to death in the electric chair but had his sentence commuted to life when the U.S. Supreme Court found death penalty statutes unconstitutional. The Sturgis murder, however, occurred just two months after Florida had reinstated the death penalty, giving prosecutors a chance to send Demps to death row again. Mungin and Jackson received life sentences. “He had poor timing,” said Greg McMahon, chief of special prosecutions for the 8th Circuit District Attorney’s Office.
‘Phase Two Death Watch’
In 1987, he had come within 13 hours of being executed — his head and right leg had been shaved so that the electrodes for the electric chair could be taped to him. But a last-minute stay kept him alive. Gov. Jeb Bush signed the latest death warrant for Demps on April 24. It was the fourth time an order of execution had been signed ordering Demps’ execution. Demps is now on so-called Phase Two Death Watch, confined to an isolation cell in Q Wing at Florida State Prison with the eyes of a correctional officer fixed on him, watching his every move, prison officials said. Prison officials said that Demps has been stripped of his personal property as he waits just a few steps from the execution chamber. Everything he owned while imprisoned during the last 30 years has been taken away, even a radio. When he wants a book, he must ask and one is handed through the bars to him. When he is done reading, he must pass it back to the guard.
Determined to avoid death house
While prosecutors have portrayed Demps as a violent triple killer who deserves a death sentence because he murdered before, Demps and his wife, Tracy, have gone on a campaign in recent months claiming he is the victim of a massive frame-up from a criminal justice system angry that he beat the electric chair once and now determined to make sure he doesn’t avoid the death house again. Tracy Demps, a Canadian woman who said she married Demps in a 1999 death row ceremony, said she has sent out hundreds of letters across the United States looking for public attention to save her husband. She said only two people have responded. “I try not to think of time running out,” she said.
Condemned man cites report Demps is basing most of his claims of innocence on a Sept. 7, 1976, report from Cecil L. Sewell, then the chief prison inspector and investigator. In the report, Sewell wrote that “before Sturgis died, he named James Jackson … as his assailant.” Sewell did not say in the report where he got the information or whether he spoke to the dying man. Demps and his wife say that the report was not given to his defense lawyer before his trial and was only discovered in 1998, forming the basis for his appeal. But the courts have refused to overturn Demps’ conviction. Demps also said in a letter to the news media that another prison inmate, Larry Hathaway, testified against him at trial and has since “recanted.” Demps claims that corrections officials and prosecutors promised Hathaway favors in return for fingering him. He also charges that Hathaway is mentally deranged and the Department of Corrections has withheld medical records that could cast doubt on his testimony. Demps also claims to have witnesses who say they saw Hathaway in a television room during Sturgis’ attack, and that there is no physical evidence linking him to the murder. “For the last 20 years, we’ve turned up document after document that his case was manufactured,” Tracy Demps said. “They had a case of a death row inmate whose case was overturned. He’s a bit of a noisemaker and they wanted to eliminate him. To do that, they obviously had the murder of Alfred Sturgis and incorporate him into something he had nothing to do with.”
Prosecutor suspended from bar
Tracy Demps also questions the character of the man who put her husband on death row, Thomas Elwell, a former Bradford County assistant district attorney. Elwell is currently suspended from practicing law for 18 months on charges that include filing non-meritorious claims, failure to exercise independent judgment and failure to provide competent representation, according to the Florida Bar Association (FBA). Elwell also was placed on emergency suspension in January 1997 for failure to properly safe-keep trust funds and maintain minimum trust accounting records, the FBA stated. The exact nature of the charges could not be immediately determined. Elwell, contacted by telephone in Gainesville, refused to comment on his prosecution of the Demps case or his suspensions from the Florida bar.
‘Perjury Incorporated’
McMahon, who has handled post-conviction appeals for the state in the Demps case, believes that Demps, Jackson and Mungin were part of a group of inmates that named themselves “Perjury Incorporated,” a prison gang that rooted out inmate informants. Demps was long viewed as a troublemaker by prison staffers, who once called him a leader among death row inmates. Internal corrections documents state that he had 14 disciplinary reports written against him between 1973 and 1977, including three for fighting and one for “scalding another inmate with hot water.” But Tracy Demps said that her husband was labeled as a rabble-rouser and a troublemaker because he was sticking up for the rights of black inmates in a “racist” prison system, which, at the time, was plagued by violence. “My husband was in one of the worst prisons in the United States,” she said. “Racism in America, particularly in the state of Florida, is rampant. At that time, he was construed as an instigator. All he had to do was gather black prisoners to be united in a front to be called an instigator. He was just someone who tried to get equal treatment and equal opportunities for black prisoners.”
State: Report means nothing
Carolyn Snurkowski, an assistant deputy attorney general in charge of criminal appeals for the state, said the report indicating that Jackson was the lone assailant was a “preliminary” document and never meant to be the final report on Sturgis’ murder. She said Sewell had no “personal knowledge” of Sturgis making the claim that it was only Jackson who attacked him and that the information was hearsay. Sturgis’ claims that it was Demps, Jackson and Mungin who attacked and fatally wounded him was included in a follow-up report. Jackson and Mungin were serving prison terms for robbery at the time of the slaying. Doing most of the fingering was Hathaway, who told investigators that just before the stabbing, Mungin told him “we’re fixing to kill a snitch.” He told investigators that minutes later he saw the three men accost Sturgis. Snurkowski said that it was the jury who convicted the three men and ultimately decided to give Demps a death sentence and allow Jackson and Mungin to live out their lives in prison. Snurkowski, the state’s top appeals prosecutor, said Sturgis’ “dying declaration,” along with Hathaway’s testimony, was the key evidence that convinced a jury Demps was guilty of capital murder. She said one of the factors the jury considered in sentencing Demps to death was that he had killed before.
Previous murders bring death sentence Demps and Jackie Hardie were convicted in 1971 of murdering two people in an orange grove in Lake County. Demps and Hardie reportedly had stolen a safe and taken it to the grove to try to open it. It was then that a local real estate agent showing land to a Connecticut couple seeking a retirement home stumbled upon the duo. The two robbers ordered all three of the victims into the trunk of a car and, when they tried to get out, Demps and Hardie opened fire, killing two of the victims and wounding the other, prosecutors said. The third victim survived and identified Demps and Hardie. Hardie died in prison on Jan. 26, 1999. Demps was one of 95 men and one woman who had their death sentences commuted to life in 1972.
http://www.apbonline.com/cjsystem/justicenews/2000/06/05/demps0605_01.html
