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Florida Executes John Errol Ferguson, Convicted of Eight Miami-Dade Murders, Despite Claims He Was Too Ill to Die

Ferguson, 65, told witnesses he was "the prince of God." The U.S. Supreme Court denied a final stay less than two hours before the execution.

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Illustration of a sandy road running beside a tall razor-wire prison fence under a hot summer sky. Not the actual prison.

John Errol Ferguson was convicted of eight murders in Miami-Dade County, and his lawyers argued that he was too mentally ill to be put to death. On August 5, 2013, Florida executed him.

Ferguson, 65, died at 6:17 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke after a lethal injection, less than two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a final request for a stay. Before 25 witnesses, including relatives of the victims, he said, "I just want everyone to know that I am the prince of God and will rise again." His lawyers had argued that he lacked a rational understanding that he would be executed, but in May the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found him "mentally competent to be executed despite his mental illness and the presence of a delusional belief." Gov. Rick Scott had signed his death warrant in the fall of 2012, setting an execution date of October 16, 2012, that legal proceedings delayed. Ferguson was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia while in a state mental hospital for several years in the 1970s, and he was released months before the first killings, according to his lead attorney, Christopher Handman.

On July 27, 1977, Ferguson, posing as a utility worker, got into a Carol City house used by marijuana dealers and let two accomplices inside. Six people were killed and two survived; at the time it was the worst mass killing in Miami-Dade County. In January 1978, while posing as a police officer, Ferguson killed two 17-year-olds, Brian Glenfeldt and Belinda Worley, who had left a youth meeting in Hialeah. He was arrested in April 1978, convicted of eight counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in both cases after an unsuccessful insanity defense at the second trial.

CBS News reported that seven men were killed at the Carol City house, while the Associated Press and the federal appeals court put the Carol City murders at six. The federal appeals court spelled Brian's surname Glenfeld; the Associated Press and CBS News spelled it Glenfeldt.

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