John Spenkelink

John Arthur Spenkelink (March 29, 1949 – May 25, 1979) was an American convicted murderer. He was executed in 1979, the first convicted criminal to be executed in Florida after capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, and the second (after Gary Gilmore) in the United States as well as the first involuntarily executed in 14 years.

At 12 years old, Spenkelink discovered the body of his alcoholic farmer father, who had committed suicide in his truck by carbon monoxide poisoning. He was arrested several times in his youth and was in and out of various jails and reform schools. He also married at 18.

Spenkelink escaped from a California prison in 1972, where he was serving a five-years-to-life sentence for armed robbery of a fast food restaurant, five gas stations, and two people. On February 4, 1973, the 24-year-old Spenkelink picked up hitchhiker Joseph E. Szymankiewicz and checked into a hotel in Tallahassee, Florida. The two had been on an apparent robbery spree. Following a heated argument, Spenkelink left the hotel room and upon his return shot Szymankiewicz in the back and beat him with a hatchet.

Less than a week later, on February 9, Spenkelink was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery in Buena Park, California, and the murder weapon was found in an apartment of one of Spenkelink's associates.^{[citation needed]}

Spenkelink claimed he had acted in self-defense—that Szymankiewicz had stolen his money, forced him to play Russian roulette, and sexually assaulted him.^{[better source needed]}

After he was charged, Spenkelink turned down a plea bargain to second-degree murder that would have resulted in a life sentence. In 1973 he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Frank Brumm was also tried as a co-defendant for the murder but was acquitted. After Brumm's acquittal he said Spenkelink had offered him $1,000 to "get rid of" a friend, and that he and Spenkelink both shot Syzmankiewicz and beat him with the hatchet. After Szymankiewicz was dead, Brumm said he and Spenkelink finished a bottle of gin over the body.

In the 1972 court case Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty schemes in all states, ruling that it had been applied unfairly. Florida and other states rushed to rewrite less-arbitrary laws.

Spenkelink appealed his sentence, but in 1977, Governor Reubin Askew of Florida signed Spenkelink's first death warrant. In 1979 Askew's successor, Governor Bob Graham, signed a second death warrant. Spenkelink continued to appeal, earning stays from both the U.S Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, but both stays were overturned, meaning that Spenkelink would be the first man put to death involuntarily (Gilmore had insisted he wanted to die) since executions were resumed in the U.S. in 1977.