STARKE, Fla. — Tonight, We the People of the State of Florida executed 74-year-old Lance Corporal Dusty Ray Spencer for the 1992 murder of his wife, Karen Spencer. She deserved to live, and acknowledging the failures of Florida’s death penalty doesn’t minimize the magnitude of that truth.
With the constant pace of executions in Florida over these past two years, it’s easy for them to feel routine. Mechanical. The same. Each one risks disappearing into the next. And in some ways, the story of how traumatized children turn into perpetrators of irrevocable violence is indeed the same.
As a child, Dusty was sexually abused, routinely humiliated, and terrorized by his father, the very person who was supposed to protect him. As a young teenager, he turned to alcohol to cope. He left home for the military at 18, desperate for an escape, seeking some structure and stability. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps conducting search and rescue missions for prisoners of the Vietnam War.
Sadly, the military could not undo his early trauma, and his substance use disorder escalated, with Dusty and his fellow Marines using alcohol and drugs to both celebrate their victories and to numb their defeats. He was discharged under honorable conditions when his tour was over.
Tragically, Dusty was never taught what a loving, stable, protective partner and father should look like. And as a result, he perpetuated what he experienced, and continued the cycle of violence with his wife Karen, and with Karen’s son, Tim. The murder of Karen in front of her teenage son and its lifelong impact on him must not be minimized. And yet, you cannot look at the moment of violence in a vacuum. You must consider the full picture.
All twelve of Dusty’s jurors heard about the crime. And they also heard about Dusty’s honorable military service, the childhood abuse he suffered, his significant substance use disorder, and how he was under the influence of an extreme mental and emotional disturbance on the day of the murder. Five of those twelve jurors concluded that based on the totality of circumstances, he should be sentenced to life without parole. In no other state in the country, including in current-day Florida, would Dusty be even eligible for execution. The flaws in his death sentence did not end there.
This was never a clear-cut death penalty case. On his direct appeal, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the trial judge improperly allowed jurors to consider whether this murder fit the aggravating factor of cold, calculated, and premeditated murder (CCP), and wrongly rejected powerful evidence that Dusty was suffering from extreme emotional disturbance and impaired judgment at the time of the crime. One of the justices unequivocally said Dusty’s case was “not a death penalty case” and that life without parole was the appropriate sentence.
The Court initially overturned Dusty’s death sentence and ordered the trial court to reconsider whether death was legally appropriate. Dusty’s lawyers argued that he should get a whole new jury – one who was not exposed to improper evidence – to determine his fate. After all, the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a new sentencing proceeding. The judge refused, and sent Dusty back to death row. In the new order, the trial judge simply paid lip service to the Florida Supreme Court’s directive and claimed he was not applying the CCP factor, but rendered the identical conclusion, just with more carefully tweaked language, and resentenced Dusty to death.
Years later, as Dusty’s case continued through the courts, multiple Florida Supreme Court justices remained convinced that this sentence was deeply flawed. One again wrote that life without parole was the proper punishment. Another concluded that his bare-majority death sentence was unconstitutional, and the trial court’s refusal to impanel a new jury meant that he was effectively sentenced to death without a trial by jury.
By the time the State killed Dusty Spencer, he had spent more than three decades on death row. Like many of those housed in prison for decades, Dusty became a changed man. His body and brain finally free from alcohol and drugs, he turned to friendship and faith with those around him. He found comfort in reading the Our Daily Bread devotionals, and insisted that they kept him alive on death row all those years.
Like so many other men before him during this execution spree, he died with gratitude for those who had given him companionship and intellectual stimulation during his years on death row. He left his few belongings, including bags of his favorite brand of coffee, behind to a friend.
We, the People of the State of Florida, must not become numb to this killing. We can’t ignore that this is the murder of the 10th veteran under this administration and the oldest man executed in the history of the State of Florida. We must fight to remind the world that Dusty Spencer was a human being. A flawed human being who committed grievous harm, and a human being who honorably served our country and risked his own life to bring his fellow Marines home. The two cannot be separated.
Semper Fi, Lance Corporal Spencer.