A man sentenced to capital punishment was executed on Tuesday, July 15 in Florida, in the southern United States, which brought the number of executions in the country since the beginning of the year, the highest total in a decade.
Michael Bell, 54, was executed by lethal injection to the Penitentiary of the State of Raiford, at 6:25 PM local (10:25 PM GMT), announced the Penitentiary Administration of Florida.
A former prisoner of the Florida Children’s School
He had been sentenced to capital punishment for the murder in 1993 of Jimmy West, 23, and Tamecka Smith, 18, in Jacksonville. This murder was motivated by his desire to take revenge on his brother’s murderer, Theodore Wright, but had mistakenly killed his brother and a girl who accompanied him.
Michael Bell is one of the thirty death sentences held in his youth for the infamous correction house Florida School of Boys, nicknamed Dozier.
The establishment, where the acts of cruelty were common, closed in 2011 after more than a century of activity, inspired the novel “The Nickel Boys” by African -American writer Colson Whitehead, awarded in 2020 by the Pulitzer Award. In 2016, anthropologists discovered the remains of 55 anonymous burials.
Up to 35 executions in 2025?
This is the 26th execution in the United States since the beginning of the year, including eight only for Florida, a record since the 28 registered in 2015. OTHERS Nine are still planned in 2025.
“The increase in executions this year is the result of the decisions of some officials chosen in a small number of states,” he said in a report published last week, the specialized death penalty information center (DPIC).
These executions are “very geographically concentrated”, more than half divided between Florida, Texas and South Carolina, underlines. Of 26 executions this year, 21 were carried out by lethal injection.
Three was by nitrogen inhalation, a method first used in the world by Alabama in 2024 and compared by UN experts with a form of “torture” and two by execution squad in South Carolina, for the first time in the United States since 2010.
The death penalty was abolished in 23 of the 50 US states. Three others, California, Oregon and Pennsylvania, observe a moratorium on the governor’s decision executions.
Source: BFM TV
