Florida Executes Man Who Killed 2 in Mistaken Revenge

A man convicted of fatally shooting two people outside a Florida bar in 1993 as part of an attempted revenge killing was executed Tuesday evening, the 26th person put to death in the US this year. Michael Bernard Bell, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:25pm after receiving a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, said Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis. Bell was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murders of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith. Bell's final words were, "Thank you for not letting me spend the rest of life in prison," the AP reports.

• In December 1993, Bell spotted what he thought was the car of the man who fatally shot his brother earlier that year, according to court records. Bell was apparently unaware that the man had sold the car to West.

• Bell called on two friends and armed himself with an AK-47 rifle, authorities said. They found the car parked outside a liquor lounge and waited. When West, Smith and another woman eventually exited the club, Bell approached the car and opened fire, officials said. West died at the scene, and Smith died on the way to the hospital. The other woman escaped injury. Witnesses said Bell also fired at a crowd of onlookers before fleeing the area. He was eventually arrested the next year.
• Bell was later convicted of three additional murders. He fatally shot a woman and her toddler son in 1989 and killed his mother's boyfriend about four months before the attack on West and Smith, officials said

• With five months left in the year, 2025 already ties the total number of executions in 2024. Florida has executed eight people so far this year, more than any other state this year, with a ninth execution scheduled for later this month.
• John Blume, director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, says the uptick in executions doesn't appear to be linked to a change in public support for the death penalty or an increase in the rate of death sentences, but is rather the function of the discretion of state governors. "A number of these people being executed are people that have been in the system for a long time; they've been on death row for a long time," Blume says.
• He pointed to a sweeping executive order signed by President Trump on his first day back in office aimed at urging prosecutors to seek the death penalty and preserving capital punishment in the states. "The most cynical view would be: It seems to matter to the president, so it matters to them," Blume says of the governors.