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Newton Slawson executed for deaths of Tampa family
By
Associated Press,
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 16,
2003
STARKE - Newton Carlton Slawson, convicted of killing four
members of a Tampa family and a fetus, was executed by injection
Friday after a 13-hour delay while his mental competency was
questioned.
Slawson was pronounced dead at 7:10 a.m., officials said. The
execution came 14 years after the killings and six years after he
began the process to drop his court appeals.
Slawson, 48, was convicted in the April 11, 1989, shooting deaths
of Gerald and Peggy Wood, who was 81/2 months pregnant, and their
two young children, Glendon, 3, and Jennifer, 4. Slawson sliced
Peggy Wood's body with a knife and pulled out her fetus, which had
two gunshot wounds and multiple cuts, court records show.
After the attack, Peggy Wood crawled down the stairs of their
garage apartment, across a backyard to her mother's home and told
her," Newton did it." She died in her mother's arms.
Slawson, who was given Valium before the injection, made no final
statement. He was asked if he had anything to say and responded
"no."
Six relatives of the victims, including Peggy Wood's brother,
Ronald Ray Williams, watched the execution.
"He was convicted of cold-blooded murder and he should've died a
long time ago," said Donna Burube, Gerald Wood's sister. "I'm happy
he's gone. I'm thrilled. I'm ecstatic."
A small number of people stood outside the prison in protest of
the execution.
"Executing the mentally ill is not going to stop crime," said Abe
Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the death
penalty."
Just an hour before Slawson's scheduled execution Thursday, Gov.
Jeb Bush issued a temporary stay so that three psychiatrists could
examine whether Slawson was competent to be executed. Those
psychiatrists reported to Bush around midnight and said they found
Slawson aware of what the death sentence meant.
The standard for competency is understanding that execution will
result in death and why the sentence is being imposed. Bush lifted
the stay early Friday morning, prison spokesman Sterling Ivey
said.
The stay came after Bush's office received a letter from
Slawson's former attorneys, Craig Alldredge and Brian Donerly, who
challenged the condemned man's sanity.
The attorneys said Slawson was mentally ill at the time of the
slayings and remains insane. Earlier this week, Donerly accused the
state of "helping the mentally ill commit suicide."
Slawson, who dropped his appeals in 2001 and asked for execution,
had eaten his last meal of scallops and Coca-Cola, read from a Star
Trek novel and visited with family members for the final time when
given news of the stay. He was visibly upset by the delay, Ivey
said.
"He wanted the sentence to be carried out," Ivey said.
At a court hearing in Tampa last month, Slawson told Circuit
Judge Rex Barbas he wanted to be executed.
"Judge, let's just end this please," he said.
After his meeting with the psychiatrists ended around 10 p.m.
Thursday, Slawson went to sleep and slept through the night, Ivey
said.
In his trial, prosecutors claimed Slawson had fantasies about
dismembering women. When he was arrested, police found bloody
clothing, a bloody knife, a .357 revolver with blood on it, an
assault rifle, 180 rounds of ammunition and a Penthouse magazine in
which had drawn images of slit bellies on some of the nude
photographs.
Defense attorneys argued that Gerald Wood had slipped crack
cocaine into Slawson's beer, sending an unstable man into a killing
rage.
For the murders, Slawson received four death sentences, plus a
30-year sentence on a manslaughter conviction for the death of the
fetus.
Since 1990, six of the 34 inmates executed have dropped their
appeals. Four of the 11 executed since 2002, have volunteered for
execution.
Abe Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the
Death Penalty, said Slawson and other death row inmates who have
volunteered for execution are mentally ill.
"The only time the state will bend over backwards is when a
prisoner wants to kill himself," Bonowitz said. "We consider it an
assisted suicide."
Last fall, two inmates - serial killer Aileen Wuornos and triple
murderer Rigoberto Sanchez-Velasco - were put to death after
dropping their appeals. The judge also ordered mental exams for them
in the days before their executions.
Slawson was the 56th person executed since Florida resumed
executions in 1979 and the second to die this year. He was the 13th
person executed under a death warrant signed by Bush.
