By DAVID FISCHER<\/p>\n
STARKE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A Florida man convicted of killing two women whose bodies were found in a rural pond was scheduled to be executed on Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
Samuel Lee Smithers<\/a>, 72, was set to receive a lethal injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke under a death warrant signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. It would be Florida\u2019s 14th death sentence carried out in 2025, further extending the state record for executions in a single year. <\/p>\n Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, followed by Texas with five. <\/p>\n Smithers was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1999.<\/p>\n His was one of two executions scheduled for Tuesday evening in the U.S. Lance Shockley, 48, was set to be executed<\/a> in Missouri for fatally shooting a state trooper more than 20 years ago.<\/p>\n Smithers awoke at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday and remained compliant, Department of Corrections officials said. The inmate did not meet with any spiritual adviser or visitors. He was given a meal that included fried chicken and fried fish along with apple pie and ice cream. <\/p>\n According to court records, Smithers met Christy Cowan and Denise Roach on different dates in May 1996 at a Tampa motel to pay them for sex. At the time, he was doing landscape maintenance on a 27-acre (11-hectare) property that included three ponds in rural Plant City, Florida.<\/p>\n On May 28, 1996, the property owner \u2014 who had met Smithers in church where he was a Baptist deacon \u2014 stopped by to find Smithers cleaning an ax in the carport, which he claimed to be using to trim tree limbs. The property owner noticed a pool of blood in the carport, and Smithers told her that someone must have come by and killed a small animal, according to court records.<\/p>\n The woman contacted law enforcement, and a sheriff\u2019s deputy met her later that day at the property. The blood had been cleaned up, but the deputy noticed drag marks leading to one of the ponds, according to court records. That\u2019s where authorities found the bodies of Cowan and Roach. Both women had been severely beaten, strangled and left in the pond to die. <\/p>\n The Florida Supreme Court denied an appeal from Smithers last week. His attorneys had argued that his age should make him ineligible for execution under the U.S. Constitution\u2019s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Although Smithers would be one of the oldest people ever executed in Florida, the justices ruled that the elderly are not categorically exempt from the death penalty.<\/p>\n And hours before the scheduled execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a late appeal without comment.<\/p>\n A total of 35 men have died by court-ordered execution<\/a> so far this year in the U.S., and at least eight other people are scheduled to be put to death during the remainder of 2025.<\/p>\n Norman Mearle Grim Jr.<\/a>, 65, is scheduled for Florida\u2019s 15th execution on Oct. 28. He was convicted of raping and killing his neighbor, whose body was found by a fisherman near the Pensacola Bay Bridge in 1998.<\/p>\n