Bennie Demps was convicted in Bradford County, Florida, of the first-degree murder of a fellow inmate, Alfred Sturgis, who died on September 6, 1976. When he committed the offense he was already serving two consecutive life sentences and a twenty-year sentence for two earlier first-degree murders and an attempted murder. The sentence for the 1976 murder was death, and he was executed in Starke on June 7, 2000, at the age of 49.
Demps and a co-defendant were tried together on two counts each of first-degree murder. Both were also convicted of assault with intent to commit murder. The trial court sentenced each man to death on both murder counts. The Florida Supreme Court decided their appeal on January 17, 1973, after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia had struck down death sentences as then imposed. It reduced the death sentences to life imprisonment and affirmed the convictions and the sentences as modified. The names of the two victims, the county of trial and the date of the offenses are not on record. The result was two consecutive life sentences and a twenty-year sentence, which he was serving at the time of the 1976 offense.
Alfred Sturgis, an inmate at a Florida prison, died on September 6, 1976. A grand jury indicted Demps and two other inmates for his murder. The case was tried in the Circuit Court for Bradford County. Demps was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, the sentence resting in part on his two earlier first-degree murder convictions. One co-defendant was convicted of first-degree murder and the jury recommended death. The other was convicted of first-degree murder and received a sentence of life. Neither had a prior murder conviction.
Demps maintained that he was innocent. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence in 1981, though it set aside two of the four aggravating circumstances the trial court had found. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case on October 13, 1981, with two justices dissenting on the ground that they opposed the death penalty in all circumstances.
Over the next two decades Demps was the subject of three death warrants before the one that was carried out. After the first, a postconviction motion was denied without a hearing; the Florida Supreme Court sent it back for an evidentiary hearing in 1982, and the denial that followed was affirmed in 1984. A second warrant produced a denied habeas petition in 1987 and an affirmed denial of a second motion. A third warrant came in April 1990, and the Florida Supreme Court stayed that execution. The stay held for years, and on April 9, 1998, the court affirmed the denial of the third motion and denied his habeas petition. Federal courts had also denied habeas relief, in 1986 and 1989.
Demps filed a fourth postconviction motion on July 2, 1999, relying on a 1976 memorandum he said he had come across in July 1998. The trial court held a hearing on May 12, 2000 and denied it. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed that denial on June 5, 2000, and denied a petition challenging the execution date of June 7, 2000 that the governor had set by warrant.
On June 7, 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution and his petition for certiorari. Demps was executed in Starke that day, the 47th person executed in Florida since 1976.
The 1973 reduction of Demps's first sentences was part of a nationwide change. After Furman v. Georgia in 1972, death sentences imposed under the earlier procedures were reduced to life imprisonment, which is why a man who had once been sentenced to death was serving a life term in 1976 and could be sentenced again for a new offense. Florida's postconviction procedure then let the governor sign a warrant for a death-sentenced prisoner whose appeals were thought to be finished, and each warrant produced a fresh round of motions. Demps went through three of them before the one carried out in 2000, over a period of more than twenty years.
Demps denied the 1976 murder to the end. The courts rejected each of his postconviction claims, and the convictions stood.
January 17, 1973: Florida Supreme Court affirms two first-degree murder convictions each for Demps and a co-defendant, reducing the death sentences to life imprisonment.
September 6, 1976: Alfred Sturgis, an inmate, dies at a Florida prison.
October 13, 1981: U.S. Supreme Court declines to review the Florida Supreme Court's affirmance.
1982 to 1990: Postconviction motions and habeas petitions follow three death warrants; the third, in April 1990, is stayed.
April 9, 1998: Florida Supreme Court affirms denial of the third postconviction motion.
June 5, 2000: Florida Supreme Court affirms denial of the fourth motion.
June 7, 2000: U.S. Supreme Court denies a stay and certiorari; Demps is executed in Starke.