Florida | Supreme Court rejects mental-illness claims, OKs execution in 1984 murder case

The Florida Supreme Court has summarily dismissed death row inmate Duane Eugene Owen’s attempt to establish that he should not be executed next week because he is too mentally ill to understand the death penalty or why it is to be inflicted upon him.

“We affirm the circuit court’s order finding Owen sane to be executed. No rehearing will be entertained by this court, and the mandate shall issue immediately. It is so ordered,” the justices said in an unsigned order.

The court added that Owen’s lawyers had missed a legal deadline for filing the challenge.

Owen was convicted in the sexual battery and murder Georgianna Worden with five hammer blows to the head within weeks after he sexually assaulted and stabbed to death Karen Slattery in 1984. Worden was a mother whose children slept elsewhere in her home during his crime; Slattery was teenaged babysitter.

Both lived in Palm Beach County. He was sentenced to death for both crimes but his death warrant concerns the Worden case.

DeSantis has set the execution for next Thursday, June 15.

Owen’s attorneys filed briefs with the high court arguing that their client suffers psychiatric disorders including gender identity disorder, paraphilic sexual disorder, schizophrenia, and dementia.

His main delusion, defense evidence suggests, is that Owen is a woman trapped in a male body but could become female by having sex with women and absorbing their femaleness at the moment of their death. He insists they live on within his body.

The state’s brief relies heavily on conclusions by a medical commission DeSantis appointed to examine Owen, consisting of veteran criminal psychiatrists Wade Myers, Tonia Werner, and Emily Lazarou.

They concluded that Owen was malingering — that is, making it up to avoid execution. The state is not allowed to put to death anybody who can’t appreciate what is happening to them.

Source: floridapheonix.com, Staff, June 11, 2023

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