Florida | Attorney’s Office seeks death penalty for woman accused of murdering ex-lovers

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA)—The State Attorney’s Office is seeking the death penalty against a woman who is accused of killing her ex-lovers.

Susan Avalon, 55, was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of her 55-year-old ex-boyfriend in Tampa.

Avalon is also accused of killing her ex-husband, David Scott in Manatee County on the same day, the State Attorney’s Office said.

“He was very caring, very kind. He was extremely funny,” said Julia Scott, David’s daughter. “He was really like a rock for us. I miss being able to go to him and tell him stuff that’s happening because he always was really supportive.”

Scott says her father worked hard to protect his children. She said he shared five children with Avalon. They divorced and Scott says she often worried about what her mother would do.

“We were very cautious about exposing, like, any information about ourselves, because it was always a possibility that she was to have found us or try to get in contact with us and try to take this away from our dad and everything,” said Scott.

8 On Your Side asked if she could’ve ever imagined something like this would happen to her family.

“It was definitely something we had thought about. that could have happened,” said Scott.

After the death of Avalon’s ex-husband on Dec. 17, 2025, authorities in Manatee County asked the Tampa Police Department to conduct a welfare check on the ex-boyfriend.

When officers arrived at the home in Hillsborough County, they found the back glass door shattered and the victim dead inside from a gunshot wound, according to the State Attorney’s Office.

Witnesses reported they saw Avalon and her vehicle in a driveway near the home around the time of the shooting, and investigators found several pieces of evidence that they said connected her to the murder.

“While our case focuses on one victim here in Hillsborough County, we know this tragedy did not end with one life. Two families are grieving, and we are committed to seeking justice while standing with everyone impacted by this senseless violence,” said State Attorney Suzy Lopez.

Prosecutors in this case have to identify statutory aggravating factors under Florida law to seek the death penalty.

“I felt relieved because it’s something that I had hoped would happen,” said Scott when asked how she felt about the state seeking the death penalty. “My goal in speaking to her in court would be to make sure she knows that what she did was wrong and she had made a mistake because he was better to us than she ever was.”

According to the State’s Attorney’s Office, those factors include that this crime was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner, that the crime was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, that it occurred during the commission of burglary, and that the defendant was involved in a contemporaneous violent felony.

Avalon is set to appear in court for a status hearing on July 9.

The case in Manatee County will be prosecuted separately at a later date.

Source: wfla.com, Ashley Suter, April 21, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Death Penalty News For a World without the Death Penalty

Comments

Tennessee | Man set to be executed files motion claiming DNA evidence will exonerate him

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Attorneys for death row inmate Tony Carruthers filed a motion in Shelby County Criminal Court seeking immediate DNA testing on evidence they claim will prove his innocence in a 1994 triple murder. Carruthers is scheduled for execution on May 12. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murders of 24-year-old Marcellos Anderson, 17-year-old Delois Anderson, and 21-year-old Frederick Scarborough. Prosecutors at trial alleged the victims were buried alive in a Memphis cemetery as part of a drug-related robbery.

Florida | Man avoids death penalty in Daytona Beach triple murder

Jerome Anderson shot and killed Antoine Melvin, 42, John Burch, 65, and Patrick Lassiter, 35, in 2023. A man pleaded no contest to a triple-murder in Daytona Beach and was sentenced April 20 to three consecutive life terms in prison as part of a plea deal in which he avoided a possible death sentence. Jerome Anderson, 41, was indicted on three counts of first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in the 2023 triple-slaying. Anderson pleaded no contest to the three first-degree murder charges April 20 and, in exchange, Assistant State Attorney Andrew Urbanak agreed not to continue to pursue the death penalty.

Singapore executes man for trafficking 1kg of cannabis

SINGAPORE — Singaporean authorities executed Omar bin Yacob Bamadhaj at Changi Prison on Thursday, April 16, 2026, following his 2019 conviction for importing 1,009.1 grams of cannabis. Bamadhaj, 41, though some reports have cited his age as 46, was arrested on July 12, 2018, during a routine search at the Woodlands Checkpoint. Officers discovered the narcotics wrapped in plastic and hidden within his vehicle as he attempted to enter Singapore from Malaysia. Under the Misuse of Drugs Act, the threshold for the mandatory death penalty involving cannabis is 500 grams, a limit this shipment exceeded by more than double.

Iran to execute first woman linked to mass protests after ‘forced confessions’

Bita Hemmati and three others have been sentenced to death for 'collusion' and 'propaganda.' Advocates claim the charges are baseless, citing a secretive process and state-televised interrogations. Iranian authorities are preparing to execute Bita Hemmati, the first woman sentenced to death in connection with the mass protests in Tehran in late December and January, according to the US-based non-profit the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Judge Iman Afshari, of Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, sentenced Hemmati, her husband, Mohammadreza Majidi Asl, and Behrouz Zamaninezhad, and Kourosh Zamaninezhad to death on the charge of “operational action for the hostile government of the United States and hostile groups,” in addition to discretionary imprisonment period of five years on the charge of “assembly and collusion against national security.”

Florida Schedules Two Executions for Late April

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis has directed the Florida Department of Corrections to move forward with two executions scheduled for late April 2026, marking a significant ramp-up in the state's use of capital punishment. The scheduled deaths of Chadwick Willacy and James Ernest Hitchcock follow a series of landmark judicial rulings that have kept both men on death row for decades.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

Florida death row is shrinking as executions accelerate

During the last 10 years, the number of death row inmates from Brevard county dropped from 12 down to three and soon it will likely be two. Chadwick Willacy, formerly of Palm Bay and who has spent 36 years on death row for the murder of his 58-year-old neighbor Marlys Sather, is set to be executed by lethal injection on April 21. Willacy is 56. Gov. Ron DeSantis has been setting records trying to clear as much of the death row roster as possible ― in 2025, Florida executed 19 inmates, more than twice the number of the previous high of eight in 2014. But the dwindling roster of Brevard death row inmates can also be traced to a misinterpretation by the Florida Supreme Court of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2016 requiring unanimous jury recommendations regarding the death penalty.

Florida Supreme Court upholds death sentence for man who raped & killed girl, babysitter in 1990

FORT MYERS, Fla. — The Florida Supreme Court on Friday affirmed the convictions and death sentences of Joseph Zieler for the 1990 murders of an 11-year-old girl and her babysitter, clearing the way for his execution after decades of the case remaining unsolved. Zieler, 61, was sentenced to death in 2023 for the slayings of Robin Cornell and Lisa Story. The decision by the state’s highest court marks a pivotal moment in one of Southwest Florida’s most notorious cold cases, which saw no progress until a 2016 DNA match linked Zieler to the crime scene.

Iran | Execution in Ardabil

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 15 April 2026: Mohammad Nourani Gargari, a man on death row for murder, was executed in Ardabil Central Prison. Simultaneously, a woman named Mona Shojaei was saved from execution and released from prison after nine years, having obtained the consent of the victim's next of kin. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was executed in Ardabil Central Prison on 1 March 2026. His identity has been established as Mahmoud Nourani Gargari, a 31-year-old father to a young child. The Ardabil native was arrested around three years ago and sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder by the Criminal Court.

Texas | Death Sentence Overturned After 48 Years

The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Thursday that Clarence Jordan’s punishment was unconstitutional A death sentence handed down by a Harris County jury in 1978 was overturned Thursday by the Court of Criminal Appeals. Clarence Jordan, 70, has been on Texas Death Row for almost 50 years, serving out one of the longest death sentences in the nation while suffering from intellectual disabilities and schizophrenia, his attorney told the Houston Press.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog