Florida carried out its 16th execution of the year on Thursday — the most in a single year in state history.
According to The Associated Press, Bryan Frederick Jennings, 66, was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. at Florida State Prison following a three-drug lethal injection.
He was condemned for the 1979 kidnapping, rape, and murder of Rebecca Kunash, a 6-year-old girl taken from her bedroom in the middle of the night. Prosecutors described it as one of the most brutal in the state’s history.
Asked if he wished to deliver a final statement, Jennings responded sharply: “No.” As the chemicals entered his system, witnesses said his chest heaved and his arms twitched before he became still.
No members of the victim’s family addressed the media afterward.
Corrections spokesman Jordan Kirkland said the execution proceeded without any problems. “The execution took place without incident,” he said. “There were no complications.”
Jennings’ execution was one of three scheduled this week across the country, though Oklahoma’s governor halted another just minutes before it was to occur. On Friday, South Carolina inmate Stephen Bryant is set to be executed by firing squad for a deadly rampage more than 20 years ago.
Jennings was 20 and on leave from the Marine Corps when he crept into the Kunash home on May 11, 1979. Court records show he removed a screen from the child’s window while her parents were in another room, abducted her, and drove to a nearby canal.
Trial testimony detailed how he raped her, then “swung her by her legs to the ground with such force that she fractured her skull.” She was later drowned in the water.
Evidence quickly mounted against him: shoe prints at the home matched his, his fingerprints were found on the windowsill, and his clothing and hair were wet when he was arrested on an unrelated warrant hours later.
Jennings was tried three times in Brevard County, with two death sentences overturned on appeal before a third was imposed in 1986. He also received life sentences for kidnapping, sexual assault, and burglary.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed Jennings’ death warrant, has now authorized more executions in a year than any Florida governor since capital punishment was reinstated nationally in 1976. The previous record was eight. Two more executions — Richard Barry Randolph on Nov. 20 and Mark Allen Geralds on Dec. 9 — are already scheduled, which would raise the total to 18.
Defending the aggressive pace, DeSantis has argued he is delivering overdue justice. “Some of these crimes were committed in the ’80s,” he said recently. “Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly.”
Jennings had filed numerous appeals, most recently claiming he was left without an attorney for months before his death warrant was signed — a violation, he argued, of his right to counsel. Courts rejected the argument.
His execution brings the number of people put to death in the U.S. this year to 42, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. At least 16 more executions are scheduled through 2026, including Bryant’s firing squad execution on Friday in South Carolina.
In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the death sentence of Tremane Wood on Thursday, sparing him minutes before he was set to die for a 2002 killing during a robbery. Wood’s attorneys acknowledged he took part in the crime but argued his brother — who later died in prison — was the one who carried out the fatal stabbing.
