Donald Dillbeck execution will move forward after Supreme Court rejects stay. Here's the latest.
Convicted murderer Donald Dillbeck is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. ET tonight at Florida State Prison after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute petition by Dillbeck's attorneys on Wednesday.
Dillbeck's attorneys argued that he should be shielded from execution because of a neurological condition caused by being exposed to alcohol before his birth. Dillbeck's biological mother drank as much as a case of beer a day during her pregnancy, according to Tallahassee Democrat coverage of his trial. She continued to abuse him until, at 4 ½, he was taken into foster care. A couple adopted him as their only child when he was 6.
Dillbeck, now 59, was sent to death row after he was convicted of the 1990 murder of Faye Lamb Vann in a Tallahassee mall parking lot.
At the time of the murder, Dillbeck had escaped from a work-release catering job in Gadsden County, where he was serving a life sentence for killing Lee County Deputy Dwight Lynn Hall, 31, in 1979, when he was 15.
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Dillbeck went to Tallahassee and tried to carjack a vehicle, according to court documents. Vann, who was sitting in the car, resisted and was fatally stabbed. He was convicted in 1991 of first-degree murder, armed robbery and armed burglary, Department of Corrections records show.
Dillbeck will be the first prisoner executed in Florida since 2019 and the 100th prisoner executed since the death penalty was reinstated in Florida in 1975, according to the Department of Corrections.
Check back for updated coverage.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida execution of Donald Dillbeck: Updated coverage