U.S. Justice Thomas declines to block FL execution set for Thursday evening

Duane Eugene Owen, who claims he’s too mentally ill to be put to death Thursday evening for sexual battering and murdering a South Florida woman in 1984, has lost his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Owen on Monday asked Justice Clarence Thomas, who screens appeals from Florida, to put his execution on hold while he attempts to prove that he suffers from mental illnesses including schizophrenia and dementia and cannot understand the nature of the death penalty or why it is to be applied against him.

He claims to be under a delusion that he is really female and can absorb the female essence by killing women as he has sex with him.

Thomas said no on Wednesday.

“The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied,” the nation’s high court announced.

Also on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith in South Florida denied a stay of execution to allow Owen to argue that he really is incompetent to be executed, ruling that Owen hadn’t overcome the deference that federal courts owe to state courts in these cases.

A trial judge in Bradford County, site of the Florida State Prison and its death chamber, earlier accepted findings by three psychiatrists who evaluated Owen, on orders from Gov. Ron DeSantis, that he was faking mental illness to avoid being put to death. The Florida Supreme Court upheld that trial judge’s findings.

Owen is to be executed for sexual battery and murder of a mother named Georgianna Worden with five hammer blows to the head within weeks of sexually assaulting and stabbing to death Karen Slattery, a teenaged babysitter, in 1984, both in Palm Beach County. He received a separate death sentence in the Slattery case.

His would be the fourth execution that Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered in Florida in 2023, according to the Associated Press, and the first since the governor formally opened his presidential campaign on May 24. The other executions happened in February, April, and early May.