JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Demonstrators, who are against the death penalty, traveled state-to-state to bring attention to an execution scheduled for this week in Florida.
Donald Dillbeck, a twice convicted murderer, was sentenced to death more than 20 years ago. He is expected to be executed via lethal injection on Thursday at 6 p.m.
Protestors note that his jury had a split verdict, which is no longer legal. Nowadays, Florida law requires a unanimous death verdict.
On Tuesday, protestors were in Orlando. On Wednesday, they stopped to demonstrate in front of the Duval County Courthouse. Thursday, they will be in Raiford, a Florida state prison.
Raiford is where the state's death row is located.
Dillbeck has been locked up since he was convicted of murder. The only time he's been out was when he escaped and killed again, a case that sent him to death row. Now at the age of 59, Dillbeck is slated to be the first person executed since 2019.
Justin Mazzola, with Amnesty International, has been following Dillbeck's case for years.
"When we're asking the state to take a life, like they're planning to do tomorrow night with Donald Dillbeck, then I think it needs to be completely aboveboard," Mazzola said.
He and others are calling on Governor Ron DeSantis to spare Dillbeck. However, the governor signed his death warrant in January. In fact, the Republican governor is pushing for change to a Florida law to allow non-unanimous death verdicts.
After Dillbeck was sentenced to death by an eight-to-four verdict, the law changed. Since 2016, death verdicts have been required to be unanimous. The law applied retroactively to some inmates, but not all of them.
The changed did not apply to Dillbeck because he had already exhausted all appeals and his sentence was final.
"About 150 of the 300 people who are approximately on death row at that time were only able to get their re-sentencing based on the Supreme Court decision," Mazzola explained. "His case preceded that 2002 decision by the Supreme Court which required that juries basically decide where or not individuals get capital punishment or not."
As of the demonstrators who showed up to the courthouse, they plan on protesting Dillbeck's execution Thursday night. Afterward they will travel to Tallahassee for a service of remembrance.