Judias Buenoano, known in Florida as Judy, was executed in the electric chair at the state prison on March 30, 1998. She was 54. She had been sentenced to death for poisoning her husband, Air Force Sergeant James E. Goodyear, who died in an Orlando naval hospital in September 1971. Nobody suspected poison at the time. The case was built thirteen years later, after a bomb exploded in the car of her fiance, John Gentry, near Pensacola, and investigators began looking back at the men around her.
By the time of her Orange County murder trial in 1985 she had already been convicted twice: of murdering her elder son, Michael Goodyear, who drowned in 1980 when a canoe she was in overturned on a river in Santa Rosa County, and of the attempted murder of Gentry. A former partner, Bobby Joe Morris, had died in Colorado in 1978, and when his body was exhumed his remains showed acute arsenic poisoning. She was never charged with his death. Each man, the courts found, had been insured for her benefit. She denied every charge to the end.
She was the first woman executed in Florida since 1848, and the third woman executed in the United States after the death penalty was restored in 1976.
The Florida Supreme Court gave her name as Judias V. Buenoano, also known as Judy Ann Goodyear. The Florida Department of Corrections lists her as Judias Goodyear Buenoano and gives her date of birth as April 4, 1943. In 1998 CBS News, drawing on the Associated Press, reported that investigators had noticed that the surname she used, Buenoano, is Spanish for Goodyear, her husband's name.
Little about her childhood is on record, and what is recorded comes from claims she made in her appeals that a federal court did not believe. In her federal habeas case she argued that her trial lawyers should have found out that she had been placed in a series of foster homes as a child and given different names; that her mother died young; that her father had been injured in a war and did not look after her; and that she had suffered poverty and physical, mental and sexual abuse while she was moved between relatives and foster homes. Relatives gave affidavits and depositions describing abuse. The federal district court found that none of them had personal knowledge of it, that their accounts rested on rumor, hearsay and things she had told them, and that they sometimes contradicted each other. It found her own account inconsistent, contrary to what she had said before, and untruthful, and concluded that she was the source of the abuse and poverty allegations. The Eleventh Circuit accepted those findings in 1996.
The same opinion records other claims her lawyers raised: that she had falsely presented herself as a clinical doctor and a sociologist, had been reprimanded by a clinic for posing as a doctor, and had a history of seizures. Those claims were also part of the case the courts rejected, and they are not proven facts about her life.
What the court records do establish is her work history in the late 1970s. A Santa Rosa County jury heard that she worked as a licensed practical nurse from December 1978 to September 1980, earning 3 dollars and 50 cents an hour, and that her bank records showed a run of returned checks from June 1979 to July 1980.
She already had a son, Michael, when she married James Goodyear in 1962, according to a history of the case published by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The court records describe Goodyear as a sergeant; the district court's history calls him an Air Force officer. CBS News gave his age at death as 37.
Goodyear served in Vietnam. Soon after he returned to Orlando in 1971 he became weak and began suffering nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Debra Sims, who lived with the couple shortly before he died, later testified that his illness came on gradually, that in the late stages he hallucinated, picking at the bed sheets and seeing a rabbit, and that his wife was slow to take him to a hospital. He was admitted to the naval hospital in Orlando on September 13, 1971, and told the doctor he had been sick for about two weeks.
The doctor could not explain the symptoms, and treatment did not help. Goodyear died on September 16, 1971. The cause was recorded as cardiovascular collapse and kidney failure, after fluid overload and congestion of the lungs. No toxicology tests were done. The doctor testified years later that if he had known arsenic was present, he would have said acute arsenic poisoning could have caused the death.
After he died she collected about 33,000 dollars in life insurance and about 62,000 dollars in dependency and indemnity compensation from the Veterans Administration, the courts found. The Department of Corrections records the date of the offense as September 1, 1971.
After Goodyear's death she lived with Bobby Joe Morris. The district court's history says she was seeing him by 1972 and later moved with him to Colorado. In Colorado, Morris fell ill with vomiting, nausea, fever and hallucinations, symptoms the Florida Supreme Court described as like Goodyear's, and he died. The State of Florida, in a 1998 brief, put his death in January 1978; CBS News said he died in 1977 in Trinidad, Colorado.
She collected about 23,000 dollars from three life insurance policies on Morris, and the mortgage on the house was paid off, according to the 1988 opinion. When his remains were exhumed in 1984, analysis of the tissue showed acute arsenic poisoning.
She was never charged with his death. When she was executed, the Associated Press reported that she had been suspected of killing a boyfriend in 1978 but was never charged because she had already been sentenced to die. His death was not tried in any court. It was, however, put before the Orange County jury that convicted her of Goodyear's murder, as evidence of a pattern, and the Florida Supreme Court held that the jury was entitled to hear it.
Michael Goodyear joined the Army in 1979, according to the district court's history. He fell ill and was found to have arsenic poisoning. By the time of his death he had what doctors called profound heavy metal neuropathy, a breakdown of the nerves that left him with no nerve or muscle function below his knees and elbows, the First District Court of Appeal recorded. Starting on January 24, 1980, he spent three months at Walter Reed Hospital and was then moved to Tampa for long-term physical and occupational therapy. He needed leg braces of about three and a half pounds each and a hook on his right arm of about two pounds. His doctor warned that he could not swim or save himself if a boat turned over.
On May 12, 1980, he was discharged into his mother's care so that he could continue his rehabilitation in Pensacola. She reportedly spent nearly 40,000 dollars changing the house for him.
He was 19. Little else about his life was reported. Witnesses at the Santa Rosa trial described a hard home life: Constance Lang, a former neighbor who had shared a house with the family, testified that his mother was ashamed of him, kept him out of sight when visitors came and was distant with him while being close to her younger children. Ken Barnes, a neighbor, said she had bonded with her younger son but not with Michael.
The day after he came home, May 13, 1980, his mother took him fishing on the East River in Santa Rosa County, along with his 14-year-old brother, J.B., and his 13-year-old sister. The sister was left on the bank at the East River Bridge. The other three went upriver in a two-seat canoe, with a lawn chair for Michael, and began fishing at about 10:30 or 11 in the morning.
About two hours later, roughly a mile upriver, the canoe overturned. J.B. gave an account of a snake falling into the canoe and the boat hitting a submerged log in the confusion, and said he was knocked unconscious. The appeals court noted that his testimony to the grand jury was uncertain about how the canoe turned over, and that a written statement to an Army investigator mentioned the log but not the snake.
Ricky Hicks, who was fishing nearby, pulled her and J.B. from the river about 600 feet from the bridge. She told him she had lost the other boy after a snake got into the canoe and she tried to hold it down with a paddle, and that it was useless to go back for Michael. Her first concern seemed to be J.B., Hicks testified, and she drank a beer he gave her. He called for rescue. He also testified that in the half hour after the rescue the canoe had barely moved, because the current was very slow.
About three hours after the canoe overturned, a rescue diver found Michael's body in the middle of the river, about a quarter of a mile upriver from where the canoe was recovered. The diver testified that the current would not have kept anyone from swimming upstream.
Michael's mother did not testify at her trial, but the state put her out-of-court statements before the jury, and the appeals court set out how they differed. She told Hicks the canoe overturned during the trouble with the snake; she told an Army investigator and others that it struck a submerged object and did not mention a snake. She said first that Michael had been wearing a life jacket and later that he wore a ski belt. No ski belt was on his body, and a doctor testified that a properly fastened ski belt could not have slipped off over his braces. She said he was thrown out about a mile upriver, that she revived J.B., could not find Michael, and swam downstream with J.B. because the current was too strong to swim against.
Michael was covered by several insurance policies. There were two small policies from 1962 and 1964, with double payment for accidental death, owned by his mother; she and Michael had signed a request for duplicate copies on April 5, 1980. A policy taken out in March 1978 and owned by her had a face value of 15,000 dollars plus a 30,000 dollar accidental death benefit. Another, from October 1978, paid 20,000 dollars with double indemnity. There was also a 20,000 dollar Army servicemen's group policy. None required a medical examination. After his death she received more than 100,000 dollars as beneficiary.
A relative testified that in a phone call in November 1980 she did not at first mention Michael's death, and in a second call said he had died during Army maneuvers. Her daughter testified for the defense that mother and son had a loving relationship, though on cross-examination she admitted that during an argument she had told her mother she was just like someone who had killed Michael. A rebuttal witness testified that the daughter had told him her mother drowned Michael for the insurance; the appeals court noted that this was offered only to challenge the daughter's testimony.
The state's case was that she did not love Michael, saw him as a burden and staged his death to look like an accidental drowning so she could collect the insurance. The defense said he drowned by accident.
On March 31, 1984, the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and of first-degree grand theft, the theft being more than 20,000 dollars obtained from Prudential Life Insurance Company by fraud over Michael's death. On June 6, 1984, she was sentenced to life in prison. The prosecutor was Russell Edgar Jr. of the First Judicial Circuit.
The First District Court of Appeal affirmed both convictions on October 29, 1985, in an opinion by Judge Nimmons, with Judges Thompson and Wigginton concurring; rehearing was denied on December 6, 1985. Her lawyer, James A. Johnston, argued that the state had not proved Michael died through anyone's criminal act and that the circumstantial evidence could not support a murder verdict. The court held that the question of whether the evidence ruled out every reasonable innocent explanation was for the jury, and that the jury could reject the accident theory because of her conflicting statements, the clash between her account and the physical evidence, including the ski belts, where the body was found and the slow current, and her motive.
After Michael's death she opened a beauty salon in Gulf Breeze, near Pensacola, the district court's history says; the Associated Press later described her as a former nail salon owner. She began living with John Gentry and became engaged to him. She persuaded him that they should take out life insurance on each other, and she later raised the amount on his life, according to the district court's history. The Florida Supreme Court found that she held 510,000 dollars in life insurance on him and was a 50 percent beneficiary under his will.
In November 1982, when Gentry had a cold, she gave him Vicon C capsules. He became violently sick with nausea and vomiting and was admitted to a hospital on December 15, 1982. He recovered and went home, and the same day she gave him more capsules; the symptoms came back. She had been telling people that he had terminal cancer, the court found. When the capsules were analyzed, they were found to contain paraformaldehyde, which the court described as a class III poison. At her later trial in Orange County, Gentry testified that after he refused to take the capsules, she was responsible for the bombing of his car.
On June 25, 1983, a bomb went off in Gentry's car and critically injured him. According to the State of Florida, she had suggested that he park alone in a remote spot, and the bomb was triggered by the car's lights. He survived.
The bombing set off the inquiry that reached back to 1971. According to a brief filed for her in 1998, Pensacola police sent the Vicon C capsules to the FBI laboratory with a request for toxicology testing dated July 6, 1983. An FBI chemist, Roger Martz, examined them and reported paraformaldehyde. A search of her home turned up wire and tape in her bedroom that matched the remains of the bomb, according to the district court's history.
Investigators then turned to the deaths of the men in her past. In 1984 James Goodyear's body was exhumed in Orlando and autopsied by the Orange County medical examiner, Dr. Thomas Hegert. A forensic toxicologist, Dr. Lenard Bednarczyk, tested tissue samples and found arsenic in the liver, kidneys, hair and nails at levels showing exposure over a long period. Both men concluded that Goodyear had died of chronic arsenic poisoning. Bobby Joe Morris's remains were exhumed the same year and showed acute arsenic poisoning. The district court's history quotes an unnamed investigator who had worked on the case from the start and attended Goodyear's exhumation; he said he had not expected the body to be recognizable after so many years, and he described her as very cold.
In Escambia County she was tried for the attempted first-degree murder of John Gentry. The case rested on both the capsules and the bombing. Her younger son, J.B., was charged with her as a co-defendant and was acquitted, according to her 1998 brief to the Florida Supreme Court. Martz testified for the prosecution about his analysis of the capsules, and the prosecutor, P. Michael Patterson, relied on that testimony to argue intent. On October 18, 1984, the jury found her guilty of attempted first-degree murder, and on November 6, 1984, she was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
No appellate decision on the Escambia conviction was reported. In March 1998, days before her execution, she filed a motion in Escambia County challenging that conviction, and the trial court denied it on March 26, 1998.
On August 31, 1984, an Orange County grand jury indicted her for the first-degree murder of James Goodyear. The prosecutor was Belvin Perry of the Orange County state attorney's office.
At trial the medical examiner testified that chronic arsenic poisoning caused the death, and Goodyear's attending physician testified that his symptoms were consistent with acute arsenic poisoning. Debra Sims described his illness and the delay in getting him to the hospital. Constance Lang testified that she had been unhappy in her marriage to Goodyear and had talked about putting arsenic in a person's food. Mary Beverly Owens testified that she had discussed poisoning with her and advised Owens, who was having trouble in her own marriage, not to divorce her husband but to take out more insurance on him and poison him. Owens and Lodell Morris each testified that she had admitted killing Goodyear.
The jury also heard about Bobby Joe Morris and about John Gentry. The FBI's findings on the capsules came in as a stipulation between the parties rather than through Martz himself, and the stipulation also recorded that searches of her home and business found no paraformaldehyde or arsenic. Gentry and Patterson testified about the capsules. According to her lawyers, the bombing itself was not admitted at the guilt stage. During the trial, Owens said that she had burned her own house for the insurance; the judge told the jury to disregard the remark, and the defense's request for a mistrial was refused.
On November 1, 1985, the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder. Her lawyers later said the jury had deliberated for more than ten and a half hours. At the penalty phase the jury heard that she had been convicted of murdering Michael and had collected insurance after his death, and Gentry testified about the poisoning and the bombing. The jury recommended death by a vote of 10 to 2.
On November 26, 1985, the trial judge sentenced her to death. The judge found four aggravating circumstances: a prior conviction for a violent felony or capital crime, that the murder was committed for financial gain, that it was especially atrocious or cruel under the statute, and that it was cold, calculated and premeditated. The judge found no mitigating circumstances. She arrived on death row the next day, November 27, 1985, according to the Department of Corrections.
Her trial lawyer was James A. Johnston. On November 25, 1985, after all the penalty phase evidence was in, she signed a contract with him and Rebecca Johnston assigning them her rights to proceeds, up to 250,000 dollars, from books, films, publications or media events about her case. That contract became one of the main issues in her appeals.
The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and the death sentence on June 23, 1988, in an opinion signed by all seven justices. It held that the evidence about Morris and Gentry was properly admitted: poisoning was an unusually distinctive method, and the similarities were strong enough to show identity, motive, intent and a common plan. It held that the state had proved the death, its criminal cause and her identity as the killer by circumstantial evidence apart from her admissions, and that expert testimony on the cause of death did not have to be given to a reasonable medical certainty. The remark about burning her house did not require a mistrial in light of the judge's instruction. The court upheld all four aggravating circumstances. Describing the kind of crime that meets that standard, it used the phrase "the conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim."
Her case then moved through a long series of state and federal challenges.
A first death warrant was signed on November 9, 1989, setting her execution for January 25, 1990. She filed a motion for postconviction relief and a habeas petition on December 21, 1989, raising 21 claims. The Florida Supreme Court stayed the execution on January 24, 1990. On April 5, 1990, it denied relief. It held that most claims were barred because they had been or should have been raised on direct appeal. On her claim that her lawyers had failed to look into her childhood, it said counsel may have fallen short but that the result would have been the same given the overwhelming evidence and four aggravating circumstances. On the book and film contract, it found that any presumption of prejudice was overcome by the overwhelming evidence of guilt.
A second warrant was signed on May 17, 1990, setting her execution for June 19, 1990. This time she challenged the electric chair itself, after the execution of Jesse Tafero on May 4, 1990, during which flames and smoke came from his head and three jolts were needed. On June 20, 1990, the Florida Supreme Court, divided four to three, upheld the denial of her motion; Justices Shaw, Barkett and Kogan dissented and would have ordered a hearing on whether the problem had been fixed.
She filed a federal habeas petition on June 21, 1990. The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida held a short hearing over two days and denied relief on June 22. On June 4, 1992, the Eleventh Circuit held that the hearing had been too limited and sent back two claims for a full hearing: that her lawyers had failed to investigate her background and mental health for the penalty phase, and that the book and film contract created a conflict of interest.
The district court held a full evidentiary hearing in January 1994 and denied relief again on June 30, 1994. Two defense experts testified that she had serious mental illness, including organic personality disorder and bipolar disorder; the state's expert found no record of either and said she had developed a generalized anxiety disorder after her sentencing, which he described as common on death row. The court found the defense experts had relied partly on background information she had invented after the penalty phase.
Johnston testified that he had known her for a long time and saw no sign of mental illness, that her medical records showed no problems until after she was sentenced, and that evidence of mental illness would have clashed with her insistence that she was innocent. His strategy at the penalty phase had been to show her humanity and potential, argue that she posed little future danger, and stress doubts about the circumstantial case. On the contract, he testified that paying him from her story had been her idea, because she could not pay the full value of his work on several cases; that he did nothing under it and received no money; and that it had no effect on his work. She testified that he had pressured her into signing after she first refused. The court believed him and not her.
On January 25, 1996, the Eleventh Circuit, in an opinion by Chief Judge Tjoflat and Judges Kravitch and Cox, affirmed. It held that even with the new evidence about her background, there was no reasonable probability of a life sentence against the four aggravating circumstances, and that the contract, signed after the defense strategy was set, had no effect on her representation. It rejected her remaining claims without discussion and criticized the 275-page, 21-claim petition. Rehearing by the full court was denied on April 23, 1996, and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case on December 2, 1996.
In April 1997 the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General issued a report on the FBI laboratory. It concluded that Roger Martz lacked the credibility and judgment needed to lead a unit, faulted his analyses and record keeping, and recommended that he not hold a supervisory post. The report did not discuss her case.
Her lawyers from the office of Capital Collateral Counsel, led by Gregory C. Smith, built her final appeal around it. They argued that Martz's identification of paraformaldehyde in Gentry's capsules was scientifically unreliable, citing a former FBI laboratory scientist, Frederic Whitehurst, who they said had found that the tests did not support the result, that no blank or standard sample had been run and that the file lacked documentation. They also said, in a brief, that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had found no drug substances in the capsules. A further issue was that an Orange County prosecutor had told the Justice Department's task force reviewing laboratory cases that Martz had not testified in the Escambia trial; the state conceded in February 1998, after checking the transcript, that this was wrong. Her lawyers also raised a claim that one of the Orange County jurors had not disclosed a prior manslaughter conviction from another state.
The governor signed a third death warrant on December 9, 1997, setting her execution for March 30, 1998. On March 26, 1998, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the denial of her last motion and refused a stay. It found that Martz had not testified at the Orange County trial, that the jury there had heard ample other evidence that she murdered Goodyear, and that there was no reasonable probability the new material would lead to an acquittal or a life recommendation on retrial. The capsules, it noted, had remained available for testing until they were destroyed in 1992. The juror claim was barred because the information could have been found earlier through the juror questionnaires. Even if the Escambia conviction were set aside, the court added, the other aggravating circumstances and the Santa Rosa murder conviction would remain.
She had been on death row since November 27, 1985. The Department of Corrections records her time there as 12 years; CBS News and the Associated Press reported 13. In prison she crocheted blankets and baby clothes, the Associated Press reported, and she said she wanted to be remembered as a good mother. She described herself as a born-again Christian. She maintained that Michael's drowning had been an accident. In an interview with a Florida television station shortly before her death, she said she thought about seeing the face of Jesus and was ready to go home.
Her case drew national attention because of the execution in Texas a month earlier of Karla Faye Tucker, which had prompted appeals for mercy, including from the pope. Only two women had been executed in the United States since 1976: Velma Barfield in North Carolina in 1984 and Tucker in February 1998. Florida had also stopped executions for about a year after flames came from the head of Pedro Medina during his electrocution in March 1997, and it had resumed only the week before, with two men executed.
On the Sunday before the execution, the Florida Supreme Court rejected a last request from her lawyers to stop the execution, and on the morning of March 30 the United States Supreme Court denied her final appeals, CBS News reported.
Guards helped her into the death chamber at 7:02 a.m. on March 30, 1998, and strapped her into the oak chair. Asked whether she had a final statement, she answered, "No, sir." She kept her eyes closed and did not look at the witnesses behind the glass. The current was turned on at 7:08 a.m. and lasted 38 seconds. The prison spokeswoman, Rhonda Horler, announced that she was pronounced dead at 7:13 a.m.
The investigator quoted in the district court's history, who attended, said it was the first time he had seen her show emotion, that she had to be carried in by guards and sat with her eyes closed and hands clenched, and that she made no final statement.
She was the 42nd person executed in Florida since executions resumed in 1976, according to the Department of Corrections, and the first woman to die in the state's electric chair. The last woman executed in Florida before her was Celia, an enslaved woman hanged in 1848 for killing her owner. The Death Penalty Information Center lists her execution as the 450th in the United States since 1976.
She is dead. The Florida Department of Corrections execution list records her execution on March 30, 1998, for an Orange County conviction, and the department's page on women on death row describes her as the first woman to die in Florida's electric chair. The only other woman executed in Florida since 1976, by the department's records, is Aileen Wuornos, on October 9, 2002.
Proven by final judgment: the first-degree murder of James Goodyear (Orange County jury, 1985, affirmed 1988 and upheld in federal court); the first-degree murder of Michael Goodyear and first-degree grand theft from Prudential (Santa Rosa County jury, 1984, affirmed 1985); and the attempted first-degree murder of John Gentry (Escambia County jury, 1984; still standing when she was executed).
Investigated, never charged: the death of Bobby Joe Morris in Colorado. His exhumed remains showed acute arsenic poisoning, and Florida courts allowed his death to be used as evidence of a pattern, but no court ever tried her for it.
Contested evidence: her lawyers argued in 1998 that the FBI laboratory finding of paraformaldehyde in Gentry's capsules was unreliable. The Florida Supreme Court decided the issue on the ground that it would not have changed the Orange County result, without ruling that Martz's analysis was right or wrong, and the capsules no longer existed to be retested. The FBI's original finding and the later criticism both stand in the record. Her claims of an abused and unstable childhood were rejected by a federal court as untruthful. A witness's claim that she burned her own house for insurance was struck at trial.
Details that vary between accounts: the year of Morris's death (January 1978 in the State of Florida's brief; 1977 in CBS News); Goodyear's rank (sergeant in the court records; officer in the district court's history); how she entered the death chamber (helped by guards, according to the Associated Press; carried, according to the investigator); and her time on death row (12 years in the Department of Corrections list; 13 in news reports). The Department of Corrections women's page says two death warrants were signed and stayed; the court records show three warrants, the third carried out.
April 4, 1943: born, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.
1962: marries James Goodyear; she already has a son, Michael.
Mid 1971: Goodyear returns to Orlando from Vietnam and falls ill.
September 13, 1971: Goodyear is admitted to the naval hospital in Orlando.
September 16, 1971: Goodyear dies; she collects about 33,000 dollars in insurance and about 62,000 dollars from the Veterans Administration.
By 1972: she is with Bobby Joe Morris; they later move to Colorado.
1977 or January 1978: Morris dies in Colorado after a similar illness.
March and October 1978: policies are taken out on Michael's life.
December 1978 to September 1980: she works as a licensed practical nurse.
1979: Michael joins the Army and falls ill.
January 24, 1980: Michael is admitted to Walter Reed Hospital.
May 12, 1980: Michael is discharged into her care.
May 13, 1980: Michael, 19, drowns in the East River, Santa Rosa County.
November 1982: she gives John Gentry Vicon C capsules.
December 15, 1982: Gentry is hospitalized; the symptoms return after more capsules.
June 25, 1983: a bomb in Gentry's car critically injures him.
July 6, 1983: Pensacola police request FBI testing of the capsules.
1984: Goodyear and Morris are exhumed; arsenic is found in both.
March 31, 1984: Santa Rosa jury finds her guilty of murdering Michael and of grand theft.
June 6, 1984: sentenced to life in prison.
August 31, 1984: indicted in Orange County for Goodyear's murder.
October 18, 1984: Escambia jury finds her guilty of the attempted murder of Gentry; her younger son is acquitted.
November 6, 1984: sentenced to 12 years.
October 29, 1985: First District Court of Appeal affirms the Santa Rosa convictions.
November 1, 1985: Orange County jury finds her guilty of first-degree murder.
November 25, 1985: signs the book and film contract with her lawyers.
November 26, 1985: sentenced to death after a 10 to 2 recommendation.
June 23, 1988: Florida Supreme Court affirms.
November 9, 1989: first death warrant.
January 24, 1990: execution stayed by the Florida Supreme Court.
April 5, 1990: Florida Supreme Court denies relief.
May 17, 1990: second death warrant.
June 20, 1990: Florida Supreme Court rejects her electric chair claim, four to three.
June 22, 1990: federal district court denies habeas relief.
June 4, 1992: Eleventh Circuit orders a full hearing on two claims.
January 1994: federal evidentiary hearing; relief denied June 30, 1994.
January 25, 1996: Eleventh Circuit affirms.
December 2, 1996: United States Supreme Court declines review.
April 1997: Inspector General's report criticizes FBI chemist Roger Martz.
December 9, 1997: third death warrant.
March 26, 1998: Florida Supreme Court affirms the denial of her last motion.
March 30, 1998: executed in the electric chair; pronounced dead at 7:13 a.m.