A Florida man was executed Wednesday for breaking into a woman’s home and stabbing her to death in 1986, a crime committed months after he was released from prison for rape.
Darryl B. Barwick, 56, was pronounced dead Wednesday of a lethal injection at Florida State Prison, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s office said.
The US Supreme Court rejected the detainee’s latest appeal to postpone his execution earlier in the day, the Associated Press (AP) news agency reported.
Before the execution, Barwick said: “I can’t explain why I did what I did. It’s time to apologize to the family… I’m sorry.”
The American added that it is necessary to show more compassion and kindness towards people, and criticized Florida’s sentencing of teens to life imprisonment.
Barwick did not meet the family members in person in the last hours of his life, but he has spoken to them by phone in recent days, prison officials said.
Darryl B. Barwick confessed to killing 24-year-old Rebecca Wendt in her Panama City apartment on March 31, 1986, after seeing her sunbathing outside and following her back to her fourth, adding that he intended to kill her rob, but that he killed her when she resisted and stabbed her 37 times.
Wendt’s bathing suit showed evidence that someone had tried to remove it without success, and while there was no evidence of sexual assault, coroners reported finding semen on a blanket where his body was found.
Authorities said they linked Barwick to the crime through his confession, the semen stain, a witness who saw him come in and out of Wendt’s apartment and footprints left inside and outside the apartment.
Barwick was convicted of first degree murder, armed robbery, attempted assault and armed robbery in November 1986 and sentenced to death two months later on the recommendation of a 9-3 jury.
The Florida Supreme Court overturned this conviction in 1989 for prosecutorial misconduct, but Barwick was convicted again in a retrial in 1992, and the jury unanimously recommended death.
Barwick killed Wendt less than three months after he was released from prison for raping a 21-year-old woman, according to court documents.
DeSantis signed Barwick’s death warrant last month, Florida’s third execution this year after a hiatus dating back to 2019.
It was also the 102nd execution in the state since the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1976.
Source: DN
