Florida to Execute 77-Year-Old Man in Nation's Busiest Death Chamber

MIAMI -- A 77-year-old Florida man convicted of beating a woman to death with a hammer is scheduled Tuesday to become the 16th person executed this year in the nation's busiest death chamber.

Curtis Wilkie Beasley was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and grand theft auto in a 1995 attack on Carolyn Monfort. The Florida Supreme Court last week rejected appeals that executing a man his age who is suffering from cognitive decline would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

Beasley, who would become Florida's seventh prisoner over the age of 70 to be executed this year, is set to receive a three-drug injection at the state prison starting at 6 p.m.

It was one of two executions scheduled this week in the U.S. Tennessee plans to execute a woman for the first time in 200 years on Wednesday by administering a lethal injection to Christa Pike, 50, who was convicted of killing a classmate in a jealous rage when they were both teens.

According to court records, Beasley had been staying at Monfort’s Dundee home, south of Orlando, in August 1995 while he was pressure washing and painting nearby apartments owned by her son-in-law. Monfort's daughter went to her home after being unable to reach her for two days and found her body in a blood-splattered laundry room.

Monfort suffered multiple blunt-force trauma injuries to the head, and a bloody hammer head was found wrapped in a towel nearby, according to investigators.

Authorities began searching for Beasley after a witness reported seeing him driving what turned out to be Monfort's car. Investigators determined Beasley had traveled to Miami and later relocated to Alabama, where he was arrested while working under a fake name for an electrical company, officials said.

Beasley was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1998.

A final appeal remains pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Beasley would be the nation’s 29th execution this year, most of which have taken place in Florida.

The state is getting closer to last year's 19 executions, which was a record in Florida since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state in nearly a decade to do so.

Two more are scheduled for this year, but Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has temporarily paused the next one.

William Lee Thompson, 74, is scheduled to be executed Oct. 13 over raping and fatally beating a woman at a Florida motel in 1976. After a doctor this month determined Thompson might be suffering from dementia, DeSantis ordered a panel of three psychiatrists to examine him Thursday to determine if he is competent to be executed.

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, issued similar stays in 2023 and 2025 but both executions proceeded following evaluations.

William Reaves, 77, has an Oct. 20 execution date. He was convicted of fatally shooting a deputy outside a convenience store in 1986.

All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.