Florida executes man for raping and killing a young woman in 1994

 The 21st Execution of 2025

Anthony Wainwright, 54 convicted of raping and killing a woman three decades ago after kidnapping her from a supermarket parking lot was executed  on June 10, 2025 in Florida. The execution was the second of the day, reported NBC News.

Wainwright received a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was convicted in the April 1994 killing of 23-year-old Carmen Gayheart, a mother of two young children, in Lake City.

The execution began about 6:10 p.m. Wainwright’s shoulders shuddered a couple of times, and he blinked and took several deep breaths before becoming completely still at 6:14 p.m.

Wainwright was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m., according to Byran Griffin, a spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Wainwright made a final statement, but the words were inaudible from the witness room.

He is the sixth person put to death in Florida this year, and another execution is scheduled for later this month. The state executed six people in 2023, but only carried out one execution last year. There were four executions scheduled around the country this week, including another one on Tuesday in Alabama. A temporary stay was issued Monday for an execution scheduled for Thursday in Oklahoma.

Richard Hamilton, the other man convicted in Gayheart’s killing, was also sentenced to death. But he died on death row in January 2023 at the age of 59.

Gayheart’s sister said before the execution that three decades is too long to wait for justice.

“It’s ridiculous how many appeals they get,” Maria David told The Associated Press, adding that each step of the appeals process reopened her family’s wounds. “You have to relive it again because they have to tell the whole story again.”

Wainwright and Hamilton escaped from prison in North Carolina, stole a green Cadillac and burglarized a home the next morning, taking guns and money. Then they drove to Florida and when the Cadillac began to have problems in Lake City, they decided to steal another vehicle.

They confronted Gayheart, a community college student, on April 27, 1994, as she loaded groceries into her blue Ford Bronco, according to court documents. They forced her into the vehicle at gunpoint and drove off. They raped her in the backseat and then took her out of the vehicle and tried to strangle her before shooting her twice in the back of the head, court filings say. They dragged her body several dozen yards from the road and drove off.

The two men were arrested in Mississippi the next day after a shootout with police.

A jury in 1995 convicted Wainwright of murder, kidnapping, robbery and rape and unanimously recommended that he be sentenced to death.

Wainwright’s lawyers had filed multiple unsuccessful appeals over the years based on what they said were problems with his trial and evidence that he suffered from brain damage and intellectual disability.

Once his execution was scheduled, his lawyers argued in state and federal court filings that his execution should be put on hold to allow time for courts to hear additional legal arguments in his case.

In a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court, his lawyers argued that his case was “marred by critical, systemic failures at virtually every stage and through the signing of his death warrant.” Those failures include flawed DNA evidence that wasn’t disclosed to the defense until after opening statements, erroneous jury instructions, inflammatory and inaccurate closing arguments and missteps by court-appointed lawyers, the filing says.

The filing also said that a jailhouse informant who testified at Wainwright’s trial finally admitted last month that he and another informant had testified in exchange for lighter sentences, a fact that had not been disclosed to the defense.

The Supreme Court on Monday denied Wainwright’s several of his final appeals without comment.

His lawyers filed a last-minute effort to seek a stay of execution Tuesday morning, focusing on claims that he was improperly barred from hiring a lawyer of his choice under state law. The high court denied his request in the evening.

David, Gayheart’s sister, said she felt cheated that Hamilton died before the state could execute him.

She said she was “overcome with emotion” when she heard the governor had signed a death warrant for Wainwright. Her parents both died while waiting for justice to be served, she said.

“There’s nothing that would keep me from seeing this all the way through,” she said.

Her sister loved animals and surprised her by training to become a nurse rather than a veterinarian, David said. Gayheart was two years younger than her sister but became a mother first, and David said she marveled at her sister’s patience with her young children.

“She was here, she mattered, she should be remembered, and she was loved,” David said of her sister.

Over the years, she has kept a book where she put every court filing, from the initial indictment through the latest appeals.

“I’m looking forward to getting the last pieces of paperwork that say he’s been executed to put into the book and never having to think about Anthony Wainwright ever again,” David said.

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Alabama executes man by nitrogen hypoxia for 1988 murder

The  20th Execution of 2025

The state of Alabama has executed Gregory Hunt by nitrogen hypoxia for the 1988 murder of Karen Lane, reported Montgomery Advertiser.

A doctor pronounced Hunt to dead at 6:26 p.m. June 10, 2025. His death marked Alabama's third execution of the year.

Overall, Hunt is the fifth person to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia in Alabama. The state executed its first inmate by nitrogen hypoxia in 2024. Across the globe, organizations, including the Vatican, have protested the use of nitrogen hypoxia in execution, calling it cruel and unusual punishment.

Execution timeline

In the execution chamber, there is a digital clock, but the seconds are not visible. The following times are approximate.

5:52 p.m. The curtains to the death chamber were opened. Hunt was wrapped in a white sheet and strapped to a gurney. A mask was affixed to his face.

5:54 p.m. Hunt declined to give any last words. He made what appeared to be a peace sign with his left hand.

5:56 p.m. Hunt began taking deep breaths.

5:57 p.m. He began gasping and lifted his head. His entire body began convulsing.

5:59 p.m. Hunt turned his head and then lifted his head. Hunt's head fell back, and he groaned loudly.

6 p.m. Hunt moved his head and gasped. He continued intermittently gasping for the next several minutes.

6:04 p.m. Hunt appeared to take his last breath.

6:19 p.m. Hunt had remained still for the past 15 minutes. His left fist remained clenched. The curtains to the death chamber were closed.

Victim's family: 'End of a nightmare'

John Hamm, the Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner, defended nitrogen hypoxia as a humane way to execute people in Alabama.

Hamm said that five of Lane's family members witnessed the execution, and Hamm read a statement from her family.

"... Make no mistake, this night is not about the life of Greg Hunt," the family said in the statement. "This night is about the horrific death of Karen Sanders Lane, whose life was so savagely taken from her. Karen was shown no mercy. She was not given a second chance. Karen was shown no grace. This is also not about closure or victory. This night represents justice and the end of a nightmare that has coursed through our family for 37 long years."

Gov. Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall released statements in support of Lane and her family.

“Decades ago, Karen Lane, at only 32 years old, experienced unimaginable final hours of her young life," Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement. "Tonight, the state carried out the lawfully imposed punishment for Gregory Hunt, who is undeniably guilty.

"And after his last-minute attempts to evade justice, he has faced the consequences of his evil crimes against Karen Lane, actions he has admitted to, even in a letter to the victim’s heartbroken father. Alabama stands with Karen Lane, and we pray her loved ones can finally find peace and closure.”

Marshall called Hunt's execution long overdue and expressed his confidence in Hunt's guilt.

“Karen deserves more than silence," Marshall said in a statement. "She deserves to be remembered for who she was, and yet some have made this case about her killer, barely mentioning her name. That is not justice. That is a disgrace. Karen Lane was a daughter and a sister. She was a human being. And tonight, we honor her by speaking the truth and by refusing to let it be buried under political theater.”

On the day of Hunt's execution, he was visited by two of his attorneys. He ate a breakfast of biscuits, eggs, oatmeal and fruit punch and a lunch of bologna, carrots, black-eyed peas, a roll, rice and gravy and fruit punch. Hunt refused a dinner and did not request any special items.

He had no phone calls June 10 and had no witnesses to his death.

More: James Osgood Execution Alabama executes James Osgood for 2010 rape and murder

The death of Karen Lane

Hunt beat Lane to death Aug. 2, 1988 in her home in Cordova. He was charged with sexual abuse, burglary and capital murder.

Hunt admitted murdering Lane but denied that he sexually abused her, even filing a final appeal May 23, claiming he did not sexually abuse Lane. The appeal requested a stay in his execution to allow the court time to process his argument.

Court documents show Hunt beat Lane with his hands, feet and a bar stool. She had 62 individual external injuries to her body. Internally, Lane had more than 20 fractures to her ribs and rib cage, a broken sternum, a lacerated liver and injuries to her aorta.

She died of blunt force trauma and bruising of the brain.

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CREATORS: Prosecuting Parents for Unsafe Sleep Environments

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
June 9, 2025

Every year in this country over 4,500 babies die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Children's Hospital of Philadelphia defines SIDS as "the sudden and unexplained death of an infant under one year of age." SIDS is one of the leading causes of death in babies from 1 month to 1 year of age. It seems to plague otherwise healthy infants, usually during sleep time.

Several states have infant safe sleep laws. In Pennsylvania, the legislature enacted a specific law requiring parents to follow the sleep recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The law provides, "Infants shall be placed in the sleeping position recommended by the AAP." In 1992, the AAP recommended, "Infants should be placed in the supine position for every sleep until the child reaches 1 year of age."

During a 2007 committee hearing on the proposed Pennsylvania legislation, Eileen Carlins, the Director of Support and Education for SIDS of Pennsylvania, told legislators, "Over and over in my job I keep hearing the same thing, they didn't know, they didn't know."

In an effort to educate new parents, the law requires hospitals, birthing centers and health care practitioners to provide educational materials, then ask the parents to sign off on a certification that they received the information.

Delaware, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Colorado have similar laws, but Pennsylvania has taken it a step further. The state is prosecuting parents for failure to provide safe sleep environments. There has been prosecution of parents in other states like Virginia and Indiana for accidental suffocations and "overlays" where a parent sleeps next to an infant and rolls onto the infant, causing death by suffocation.

According to a recent article in Spotlight PA, a nonpartisan investigative journalism website, two sets of Pennsylvania parents face felony charges after police say their infants died while in "unsafe" sleep positions.

While experts and family advocates agree babies should sleep on their backs without anything in the crib, should simply failing to follow the recommendations amount to murder-three or involuntary manslaughter?

In one case, according to newspaper reports, back in May of last year, police in Lebanon County, Pa., responded to the Penn State Health Hershey Medical Center for the death of a three-month-old infant. Police said that the child's mother, Gina Strause, found the child unresponsive inside his crib.

According to police documents, "(Gina) related she went to get the child inside his crib to feed him and that was when she observed he was cold to the touch and appeared blue and she immediately called 911 and performed CPR until EMS arrived."

Police charged Strause, 40, and her husband, David, 42, with endangering the welfare of children, involuntary manslaughter and recklessly endangering another person. According to police, Strause said she placed the child back in his crib between 1:00 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. "on a 'pillow' and he was placed on his stomach (prone)."

In a second case, 19-year-old Natalee Michele Rasmus is facing murder charges for the death of her infant in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Rasmus is charged with third-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment in the death of her one-month-old daughter in October of 2022.

An autopsy determined the infant's death was caused by asphyxia due to mechanical compression.

Although parents in Pennsylvania are informed of safe sleep environments — being provided a pamphlet and signing a certification may not be enough, and certainly shouldn't be the basis for criminal charges.

An ongoing study by Johns Hopkins University is analyzing the use of an infant sleep assessment tool and motivational interviewing to enhance parent communication on safe sleep.

While the study is still recruiting participants, researchers hypothesize it will improve effective communication on sleep practices, reducing SIDS risk.

There is even research published in eBiomedicine that has identified a potential biomarker for SIDS. Yet, parents devastated by the death of an infant child face the wrath of the criminal justice system.

Nancy Maruyama, the executive director of Sudden Infant Death Services of Illinois, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about safe-sleep practices told Spotlight PA,

"To charge them criminally is a crime, because they have already suffered the worst loss."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Inmate whose Supreme Court case changed threshold for executing persons with mental illness dies in prison

Scott Panetti, a convicted murderer diagnosed with schizophrenia who represented himself at trial in a 1920s-era cowboy costume while attempting to subpoena John F. Kennedy and Jesus as witnesses — and whose execution was stayed by a landmark Supreme Court ruling on capital punishment and mental illness — died on May 26 in a prison hospital in Galveston, Texas. He was 67.

The cause was acute hypoxic respiratory failure, according to the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, reported The New York Times.

In the 2007 case Panetti v. Quarterman, the U.S. Supreme Court raised the bar for executing the mentally ill, holding that an individual must have a “rational understanding” of why the state planned to put him to death. (Nathaniel Quarterman was director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.)

An earlier standard required only that a mentally ill person be aware that he or she was going to be executed and why.

“A prisoner’s awareness of the State’s rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court’s 5-4 majority.

Mr. Panetti was first diagnosed with a psychotic disorder when he was 20. He was hospitalized repeatedly for delusions and psychotic episodes over a decade before he killed the parents of his estranged second wife in 1992.

At a hearing to determine if he was competent to serve as his own lawyer, his first wife recalled an episode in which he was convinced that the devil possessed their home, leading him to bury their valuables in the yard. A jury ruled him competent to represent himself.

In his rambling opening statement at trial in 1995, wearing a big cowboy hat and a purple bandanna, he showed off a tattoo and spoke of bull riding and how his father looked like Colonel Sanders.

A standby lawyer at the trial called Mr. Panetti’s courtroom performance “trance-like” and “scary” and the procedure “a judicial farce.” He was found guilty and sentenced to death. 

For decades, prosecutors in Texas argued in state and federal courtrooms that Mr. Panetti was mentally competent to be executed. Although the Supreme Court made it harder to execute the insane when Mr. Panetti’s case came before it, the court did not commute his sentence. The case was returned to lower courts to further weigh his competency.

Testifying for Mr. Panetti, psychiatric experts who had diagnosed him with schizo-affective disorder said he was under the delusion that he was being put to death because of a battle between “the forces of the darkness and God and the angels and the forces of light.”

Texas prosecutors argued that he was faking it. The state said that secretly recorded conversations with his parents “provide conclusive evidence that Panetti has a rational understanding of the relationship between his crime and his punishment,” and that he “has been grossly exaggerating his symptoms while being observed.”

Greg Abbott, who was Texas’s attorney general then (he is now governor), said in 2014, “Panetti knows that he killed his in-laws while his wife and child looked on, and he knows that he has been sentenced to die for that crime.” The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 7-0 against commuting Mr. Panetti’s death sentence.

Texas’s push to execute him drew a national outcry. Opponents said imposing the death penalty on an insane person who had possibly been unaware of his actions crossed a moral line and violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

In December 2014, on the date that Mr. Panetti was scheduled to be put to death, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals in New Orleans stayed the execution and ordered a new competency hearing.

In 2022, while the case continued to wend its way through the courts, Mr. Panetti’s lawyer, Gregory Wiercoch, said, “It is unprecedented to be litigating on an execution competency claim for 20 years.”

The next year, a federal judge in Austin, Robert Pitman, ruled that Mr. Panetti should not be executed. “There are several reasons for prohibiting the execution of the insane,” the judge found, “including the questionable retributive value of executing an individual so wracked by mental illness that he cannot comprehend the ‘meaning and purpose of the punishment,’ as well as society’s intuition that such an execution ‘simply offends humanity.’ Scott Panetti is one of these individuals.”

Scott Louis Panetti was born on Feb. 28, 1958, in Hayward, Wis., one of four children of Louis and Yvonne (Empereur) Panetti. At 18, he enlisted in the Navy, and after an honorable discharge joined his parents in Fredericksburg, Texas, where they had moved to manage ranches.

He is survived by his sisters Victoria Panetti-Studer and Jacki Maenius; three children from his first marriage, Chase, Katrina and Mary Perry; a daughter from his second marriage, Amanda Panetti-Lamb; and three grandchildren.

In Fredericksburg, west of Austin, Mr. Panetti dressed in buckskin clothes and claimed to have fought in Vietnam, though he was 15 when the United States withdrew its forces from the country. His marriage to Jane Luckenbach ended in divorce. His second marriage, in 1989, to Sonja Alvarado, was rocky. Several times he was involuntarily committed to Kerrville State Hospital in the grip of delusional episodes.

In the summer of 1992, Ms. Alvarado left him, obtained a restraining order and, with their young daughter, moved to the home of her parents, Joe and Amanda Alvarado.

Mr. Panetti stalked the family, peering into the windows at night. One early morning in September 1992, he shaved his head, put on camouflage clothes and broke a glass door to his in-laws’ home. He shot Mr. and Mrs. Alvarado at close range with a rifle. He took his wife and daughter hostage and drove to a friend’s house, where he was living. He changed into a suit and surrendered to the police.

“I was crying the whole time,” Sonja Alvarado said in an interview 15 years later, when Mr. Panetti’s case reached the Supreme Court. “He told me he’d heard voices, that he didn’t know if he was going to kill us or let us go.”

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President takes unprecedented action to unilaterally call in the national guard in California

President Trump took extraordinary action on Saturday by calling up 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protests in California, making rare use of federal powers and bypassing the authority of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, reported The New York Times.

It is the first time since 1965 that a president has activated a state’s National Guard force without a request from that state’s governor, according to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, an independent law and policy organization. The last time was when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators in 1965, she said.

Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, immediately rebuked the president’s action. “That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,” Mr. Newsom said, adding that “this is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.”

Just what the President wanted, unrest in a deep blue state so he could further incite the perception of lawlessness and expand his authoritarian goals.

Governors almost always control the deployment of National Guard troops in their states. But the directive signed by Mr. Trump cites “10 U.S.C. 12406,” referring to a specific provision within Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services. Part of that provision allows the federal deployment of National Guard forces if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

It also states that the president may call into federal service “members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws.”

Mr. Trump’s directive said, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on Saturday night that Mr. Trump was deploying the National Guard in response to “violent mobs” that she said had attacked federal law enforcement and immigration agents. The 2,000 troops would “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester,” she said.

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Federal Court allows colleges and universities to directly pay student-athletes

A US federal judge granted approval Friday of a landmark $2.6 billion class action settlement that transforms college athletics by allowing schools to directly pay student-athletes for the first time in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) history, reported Jurist.

In a released statement, NCAA President Charlie Baker said, “This is new terrain for everyone… Opportunities to drive transformative change don’t come often to organizations like ours. It’s important we make the most of this one.”

The settlement resolves antitrust claims brought by  Division I student-athletes in a class action lawsuit challenging NCAA restrictions on Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) compensation and athletic services payments. The case affects over 389,000 class members comprised of current and former student-athletes dating back to 2016.

The settlement creates multiple funds to pay out damages, the majority of which will be paid to class members made up of football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball players. Within each sport, damages will be paid out based on the sport, conference, years played, recruitment ratings, and various performance metrics.

Friday’s settlement also requires the NCAA to enact new rules for student-athlete compensation over the next 10 years. Schools in the NCAA’s five largest (“Power 5”) conferences will supply benefits and direct compensation to student-athletes in amounts worth up to 22% of the average annual athletic revenue for participating schools. Revenue is estimated to be more than $20 million per school in the 2025-26 school year and over $19 billion in total for the 10-year period.

Shortly after Friday’s court ruling, it was announced that former Major League Baseball executive Bryan Seeley had been appointed to run the College Sports Commission, a newly-formed organization that will oversee student-athlete revenue distribution for the Power 5 schools.

The case involves a contentious legal history starting with O’Bannon v. NCAA. The 2015 case established that NCAA amateurism — a doctrine purported to maintain the fundamental character of collegiate sports — did not exempt the NCAA from federal antitrust laws. However, the court still allowed the NCAA to limit student-athlete payments to the full cost of attending college.

In 2019, California approved Senate Bill 206, allowing for student-athletes playing in-state to accept NIL compensation, and several other states passed similar laws the following year. A 2021 Supreme Court ruling further established that the NCAA was violating antitrust regulations by restricting athlete pay. In July 2021, the NCAA adopted an interim policy that allowed student-athletes to receive NIL payments while maintaining amateur eligibility. NIL payments are made by “Collectives” — independent organizations that fundraise money for the universities. 

Friday’s judicial approval came from Senior Judge Claudia Wilken of the US District for the Northern District of California. Wilken is the same judge who originally heard O’Bannon v. NCAA.

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SCOTUS already capitulated to broad presidential authority on travel bans

President Trump has signed a new travel ban. Travelers from 12 countries will be barred from entering the US, and people from an additional seven countries will face partial travel restrictions, reported NPR.

The proclamation goes into effect June 9 — and fulfills something Trump has long-promised: to bring back the travel ban from his first term.

But that ban was the subject of many legal challenges. Some legal scholars say President Trump has learned a lot since then.

In Trump v. Hawaii, a 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court gave broad leeway to presidential authority. The Supreme Court upheld President Trump's travel ban that barred nearly all travelers from five mainly Muslim countries as well as North Korea and Venezuela.

The president's proclamation was "squarely within the scope of Presidential authority under the INA," the court wrote in its majority opinion, referring to the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The court acceded broadly to presidential power. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, noted that the INA exudes deference to the president. The executive order, he wrote, was more detailed than similar orders by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.

Roberts then deferred to the president's power. The only thing a president has to signal is that entry for people from various countries would be detrimental to the interest of the United States. The president undoubtedly fulfilled that requirement here, the court noted.

The president, Roberts said, has extraordinary power to express his opinions to the country, as well. The plaintiffs argued that Trump's past campaign and other statements about Muslims should be taken into account, but the majority said it is not the court's role to do that.

The upshot of the court's precedents is clear, he said. The court should not inhibit the president's flexibility in responding to changing world conditions, and any court inquiry into matters of into national security is highly constrained. As long as the president presents an explanation for the travel ban that is "plausibly related" to a legitimate national security objective, Roberts said, he is on firm constitutional ground.

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