TALLAHASSEE \u2013 Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his tenth death warrant of 2026 on Tuesday, this time for Dusty Ray Spencer, who has spent more than three decades on Death Row for murdering his wife in Orange County.<\/p>\n
Spencer, 74, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on June 25 at Florida State Prison in Stark, according to the warrant. The window to carry out the sentence runs from noon, June 25 through noon, July 2.<\/p>\n
According to court records, Spencer had a violent history with his wife, Karen, before stabbing her to death in the backyard of their home on Jan. 18, 1992.<\/p>\n
A little more than a month earlier, records state Spencer choked, hit, and threatened to kill his wife after questioning her about withdrawing money from a bank for their painting business. Dusty Spencer was jailed, but Karen later requested he spend the holidays at home.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 4, her teenage son intervened when he awoke to find Dusty Spencer hitting Karen Spencer with a clothes iron.<\/p>\n
Dusty Spencer fled, only to return less than two weeks later, when her son found his mother being hit by a brick in their backyard. The son grabbed a rifle from his mother\u2019s bedroom but it misfired. As Karen Spencer begged for the attack to stop, her head was slammed against a concrete wall and Dusty Spencer threatened the teenager with a knife.<\/p>\n
When police arrived, Karen Spencer was dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had been stabbed several times in the chest, had cuts on her face and arms, and suffered blunt force trauma to the back of her head,\u201d records state.<\/p>\n
Spencer was charged with first degree murder, along with aggravated assault, attempt to commit murder in the first degree and aggravated battery, Spencer was sentenced to death on December 21, 1992 and resentenced to death on January 18, 1995.<\/p>\n
In the resentencing order, Circuit Judge Belvin Perry noted that Karen Spencer was \u201calive and conscious\u201d throughout the beating.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stark terror she must have felt (knowing the prior threats by the Defendant to take her life) as her life slipped away from her; the humiliation as the Defendant lifted her clothing exposing her private parts to her son, while she was laying there bleeding, in pain, pleading for the Defendant to stop as he bashed her head against a concrete wall, is beyond comprehension,\u201d Perry wrote. \u201cThe victim\u2019s acute awareness of the Defendant\u2019s continued assault in the face of her pleas makes this an especially cruel murder.\u201d<\/p>\n
The latest death warrant follows the execution of Richard Knight, 47, last Thursday for the 2000 murder of his cousin\u2019s girlfriend Odessia Stephens and her four-year-old daughter Hanessia Mullings.<\/p>\n
Knight was the seventh execution of the year for Florida, which set a modern era record with 19 executions in 2025. Florida accounted for 40 percent of the executions conducted in the U.S. last year, according to Amnesty International.<\/p>\n
The next execution scheduled is for Andrew Lukehart, 53, on June 2.<\/p>\n
Lukehart was convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse for the February 1996 death of five-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw, his girlfriend\u2019s daughter, in Duval County.<\/p>\n
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