Florida Executes Man Convicted of Double Slaying as U.S. Reaches Execution Milestone

Florida’s execution of death row inmate Michael Bernard Bell on Tuesday for the 1993 shooting deaths of two people outside a Jacksonville bar reached a 10-year high for the death penalty in the United States prior to August.

At Florida State Prison in Raiford, 45 miles southwest of Jacksonville, Bell, 54, was put to death by lethal injection. According to a statement from the Florida Department of Corrections, he was declared deceased at 6:25 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court rejected his two last requests, one of which Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan stated they would have granted, and he was put to death.

Bell’s last words were, “Thank you for not letting me spend the rest of my life in prison.”

Bell was found guilty of using a military-style AK-47 semiautomatic rifle to fire and kill Temecka Smith, 18, and Jimmy West, 22, outside the Moncrief Lounge in Jacksonville on December 9, 1993.

Bell, according to the prosecution, spent months plotting to exact revenge on West because he believed that West was another guy who had murdered his brother, Lamar Bell, in June 1993.

According to court documents, Lamar Bell was slain in self-defense by a man called Theodore Wright.

When Wright killed Lamar Bell, he had a yellow Plymouth, which he later sold to his half-brother, West.

On December 9, 1993, Michael Bell found the car outside the lounge and shot West and Smith as they got inside.

According to the Times-Union, Bell’s request for a stay of execution was unanimously denied by the Florida Supreme Court because of “overwhelming evidence” against him.

Bell’s death tied 2025 with the previous records set in 1984 and 2014, respectively, and made him the eighth person executed in Florida this year.

While 23 states and the District of Columbia forbid the death penalty, 27 states in the US permit it.

At least nine more prisoners in Florida are scheduled to be put to death in 2025.

The United States has executed 35 people this year, including other executions that have taken place and those planned for the entire country in 2025.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, that is a 40% increase over the 25 executions that took place in 2024, but it is still far from the 98 people who were put to death in 1999.

Texas had five executions last year, while Alabama had six, the most in the country.

Last year, just seven other states carried out capital punishments; South Carolina carried out two executions, while Missouri and Oklahoma each carried out four.

In 2024, one prisoner was executed in each of Utah, Florida, Georgia, and Indiana.

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