Ron DeSantis signed a capital punishment warrant for Curtis Wilkie Beasley on Wednesday, setting an execution by lethal injection at Florida State Prison for Sept. 29. The case stems from a 1995 Polk County murder, and Beasley is now the 16th death row inmate in Florida to have a warrant signed this year.
Beasley is 77 years old. In 1998, a jury voted 10-2 to recommend that he die for the death of 62-year-old Carolyn Monfort of Dundee, and he was later found guilty in February 1998 on charges of first-degree murder, robbery and grand theft.
Carolyn Monfort case
According to court records, Monfort’s body was discovered by her son on Aug. 24, 1995. The warrant signed by DeSantis covers the killing of a Polk County woman who was bludgeoned with a hammer in the laundry room of her home. During a 90-minute hearing before Circuit Judge Cecelia Moore in April 1998, Beasley said, “I did not kill Carolyn Monfort,’’ and “I did not steal her car and I did not steal her money.’’
Florida death warrants
The new warrant comes as Florida has carried out 13 executions this year. The state carried out 19 executions last year, and the modern era of the death penalty began in 1976 after a 1972 Supreme Court decision halted it. Beasley’s scheduled date follows two other executions already on the calendar this month: Harold Gene Lucas is scheduled to be executed Tuesday, and Daniel Owen Conahan Jr. is slated for Sept. 10.
DeSantis and Michael Sheedy
DeSantis said during a July 28 appearance at the Florida Sheriffs Association Summer Conference at Trump National Doral, “I don’t know if closure is the right word, because you’ll probably never get full closure. But at least knowing justice was served is something that was very important to a lot of people,” The same week, Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops Executive Director Michael Sheedy asked DeSantis to stay Lucas’ execution, writing, “To punish with lifelong imprisonment is not to minimize the heinousness of Mr. Lucas’ crime” and “It is rather to recognize with awe that God is the author of life, and to reserve to him the taking of human life except where it is otherwise impossible to maintain the common good.”
Beasley’s Sept. 29 execution date puts his case into a tightly packed stretch of scheduled executions in Florida. Whether that date holds now depends on whether any further legal delay is granted before Florida State Prison carries it out.
