Gov. DeSantis approves execution for Florida man convicted of 1976 Miami-Dade murder

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday signed the warrant for the execution of death row inmate William Lee Thompson for the murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery of Sally Ivester more than 50 years ago in North Miami Beach.

Thompson, 74, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Stark on Oct. 13, with the window for the warrant open from noon Oct. 13 to noon Oct. 20.

This is the third death warrant Thompson has received from a Florida governor.

The warrant, signed a day after Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.'s execution, is the 17th DeSantis has signed this year, two short of the modern-era record for Florida that he set last year.

Conahan was the 15th execution carried out by the state, for the 1996 strangulation of 21-year-old Richard Allen Montgomery in Charlotte County.

Curtis Wilkie Beasley, 77, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 29 for the 1995 murder of a Polk County woman who was bludgeoned with a hammer in her home.

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty quickly started a petition against the execution, stating that Thompson is "intellectually disabled" and pointing to a jury voting 7-5 for the death penalty.

According to court records, Thompson, Rocco Surace, Barbara Savage, and Ivester were staying together in a motel room in Miami-Dade County on March 30, 1976. 

Thompson and Surace instructed the two women to call their families to obtain money. When Ivester could only get $25 from her family, she was taken to a bedroom where she was beaten with his chain-link belt, assaulted with a nightstick and chair leg, and burned with cigarettes and lighters. 

After a second attempt to get money from her mother, the beating continued in the motel room until she died of internal bleeding and multiple injuries.

Savage testified that she feared for her life if she tried to leave the motel during the attack.

Thompson was arrested two days later. He initially entered a plea of "not guilty," but after changing his plea to "guilty" on charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery, he was sentenced to death on June 17, 1976.

The Florida Supreme Court reversed the judgments in 1977, requiring the trial court to allow Thompson to withdraw his guilty plea and proceed to trial.

In September 1978, Thompson again pled guilty to all charges and was sentenced to death again, with a majority of the jury in support.

A death warrant signed in 1982 by Gov. Bob Graham was halted when the U.S. District Court for the Southern District granted a stay.

In 1987, after the Florida Supreme Court granted a stay of a death warrant signed by Gov. Bob Martinez, the court also vacated the death sentence.

At a resentencing in 1989, the jury voted 7-5 to recommend death, the trial court again imposed the death penalty, and the state Supreme Court upheld the sentence on direct appeal.

The trial court rejected two additional postconviction challenges.

Surace, who also pled guilty to the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Ivester, was initially sentenced to death only to have the Florida Supreme Court reverse the sentence on appeal. In Surace's retrial, he was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life after Thompson testified and claimed responsibility. Surace died in prison on November 14, 1993.