Florida to execute a man convicted for raping and killing a woman outside a bar
Stark, Fla. (AP) – A man convicted of rape and killing a woman near a central Florida bar is scheduled to be executed Tuesday.
Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, plans to give a fatal injection at a Florida prison near Stark, banning last-day probation. He was convicted of the murder of Michelle McGrath in May 1994.
Gudinas will be the seventh player in Florida this year and is scheduled to hold its eighth player next month. The state also executed six more people in 2023, but only one execution was performed last year.
A total of 23 men were executed in the United States this year, and the execution scheduled for that year will be the most executed year since 2015.
Florida has more executioners than any other state this year, while Texas and South Carolina have second place. Alabama has executed three people, Oklahoma killed two, and one in Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana and Tennessee each have. Mississippi is scheduled to join other states on Wednesday, with its first execution since 2022.
McGrath last appeared at a bar called Barbarella shortly before 3 a.m. on May 24, 1994. Her body was found in an alley next to a nearby school a few hours later, with evidence of severe trauma and sexual assault.
Gudinas was at the same bar with his friends the night before, but they all later testified that they had left without him. A school employee discovered McGrath’s body later identified Goodinas as a person who had fled the area in advance. Another woman also identified Gudinas as the one who caught her in the car the night before and threatened to beat her.
Goodinas was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995.
Goodinas’ attorneys have appealed to the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Attorneys argue in their state that evidence related to “lifelong mental illness” exempted Goodinas from the death penalty. The Florida Supreme Court denied the appeal last week, ruling that case law blocking people with mental disabilities would not apply to people with other forms of mental illness or brain damage.
Meanwhile, federal documents argue that the Florida governor’s unrestricted signing of a death order violates the constitutional rights of death prisoners to due process and leads to arbitrary procedures that determine who lives and dies. The U.S. Supreme Court has not issued its ruling.
