US executes convicted murderers in Florida, Texas

Two men convicted of murder, including one who spent more than 25 years on Death Row, were executed by lethal injection in the southern US states of Florida and Texas on Thursday.

James Ford, 64, was sentenced to death in Florida in 1999 for the 1997 murders of Greg and Kimberly Malnory, who were parents of a young toddler and worked with the killer at a turf farm in the town of Punta Gorda.

He was executed at 6:19 PM (2319 GMT), the state’s department of corrections said in a statement.

According to court documents, Ford shot Greg Malnory, 25, in the head and slit his throat. His 26-year-old wife was raped, bludgeoned and shot.

Their bodies were discovered by an employee of the sod farm the next day.

The couple’s 22-month-old daughter spent more than 18 hours strapped in a car seat in their pickup truck before being found. She was covered in mosquito bites and her mother’s blood, according to court documents.

Ford was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, rape and child abuse.

Ford’s attorneys sought to halt his execution on the grounds that although he was 36 at the time of the murders, he had the mental age of a 14-year-old.

A 2005 US Supreme Court decision barred the execution of people younger than 18 when they committed their crimes.

The Florida Supreme Court rejected Ford’s argument last week and he filed a last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court, which denied his application for a stay of execution without comment.

Richard Tabler, 46, was put to death later Thursday for the 2004 murders of a strip club owner, Mohamed Amine Rahmouni, and another man, Haitham Zayed, in the city of Killeen, Texas.

Tabler also confessed to killing two teenage dancers at the club, aged 16 and 18, but was never tried for their deaths.

Tabler was pronounced dead after apologizing in his final statement to the families of his victims.

“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t regret my actions,” he said, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. “If you feel that this is what you need to get you closure, I pray it helps you have that closure.”

Tabler had abandoned his appeals against the death sentence.

Ford and Tabler were the fourth and fifth US Death Row inmates put to death this year — after executions in Alabama, South Carolina, Texas.

There were 25 executions in the country last year.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the country’s 50 states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.

Three states — Arizona, Ohio and Tennessee — that had paused executions have recently announced plans to resume them.

President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and on his first day in the White House he called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”