{"id":313983,"date":"2026-06-20T09:24:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/313983\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T09:24:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:24:36","slug":"death-row-inmate-dwight-eaglin-re-sentenced-to-death-for-2003-charlotte-county-prison-killings-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/313983\/","title":{"rendered":"Death row inmate Dwight Eaglin re-sentenced to death for 2003 Charlotte County prison killings | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (WINK)\u2014 A\u00a0Charlotte County judge re-sentenced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winknews.com\/search\/?l=25&amp;s=start_time&amp;sd=desc&amp;f=html&amp;t=article%2Cvideo%2Cyoutube%2Ccollection&amp;app=editorial&amp;nsa=eedition&amp;q=Dwight+Thomas+Eaglin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Dwight Thomas Eaglin<\/a> to death for\u00a0two murders that happened more than two decades ago.<\/p>\n<p>The sentencing hearing for Dwight Thomas Eaglin began just after 9:00 a.m. Friday in Charlotte County court.<\/p>\n<p>Eaglin was re-sentenced for the 2003 killings of Correctional Officer Darla Lathrem and inmate Charlie Fuston at Charlotte Correctional Institution.<\/p>\n<p>The sentences will run concurrently.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors say Eaglin beat Lathrem and Fuston to death with a hammer during an escape attempt from the prison in 2003.<\/p>\n<p>Lathrem was supervising a work crew at night when she was lured away and killed, according to court records.<\/p>\n<p>Eaglin was first sentenced to death in 2006 for the murders, but his lawyers later challenged the sentence following changes in Florida\u2019s death penalty sentencing requirements. He was granted a new penalty phase trial.<\/p>\n<p>At the time of the killings, Eaglin was already serving a life sentence for a 1998 murder in Pinellas County in which he cut the throat of a man and stabbed him to death outside a club.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2718\" data-end=\"2857\">In January, a jury recommended the death penalty for both murders, voting 11-1 for the murder of Lathrem and 12-0 for the murder of Fuston.<\/p>\n<p>Janet Best, the sister of Darla Lathrem, released a statement after the jury&#8217;s recommendation in January.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our family is grateful that jurors made the appropriate recommendation,&#8221; Best said. &#8220;And we look forward to the Judge imposing that recommendation, so that justice will finally be served. We miss Darla very much.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>State Attorney Amira Fox also spoke on the case following the jury&#8217;s recommendation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will never let up when it comes to seeking justice, not after a day, a year, or decades,&#8221; Fox said. &#8220;This was a heinous crime and clearly a death penalty case. We will never stop in our quest for justice for victims.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The defense has already filed paperwork to appeal the re-sentencing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (WINK)\u2014 A\u00a0Charlotte County judge re-sentenced Dwight Thomas Eaglin to death for\u00a0two murders that happened more&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,4250,115],"class_list":["post-313983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-charlotte","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}