Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed a death warrant for Duane Owen, who was convicted of committing two murders in 1984 in Palm Beach County. Owen is scheduled to be executed on June 15 which would be Florida’s fourth execution in less than four months.
Duane Owen, 62, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on June 15 in the murder of Georgianna Worden, who was bludgeoned with a hammer and sexually assaulted in her Boca Raton home in May 1984, according to the death warrant and court records.
Owen also was sentenced to death in the March 1984 murder of 14-year-old Karen Slattery, who was babysitting at a Delray Beach home, according to state and federal court documents. Slattery was stabbed to death.
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“The Slattery and Worden cases are legally distinct but factually similar,” a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a 2012 decision turning down an appeal by Owen in the Slattery case. “In each murder, Owen broke into a private home late at night, removed most of his clothing, sexually assaulted the victim, and brutally murdered the victim (he killed Slattery with a knife, Worden with a hammer). Delray Beach and Boca Raton police worked together to investigate the murders and, after Owen’s arrest, questioned Owen about both murders. Owen confessed to both murders on the same day.”
The death warrant issued Tuesday is for the Worden murder. Owen was found guilty in that case in February 1986 and sentenced to death a month later, according to a summary that Attorney General Ashley Moody sent to DeSantis in advance of the death warrant.
If the death sentence is carried out, Owen would be the fourth man put to death at Florida State Prison in 2023 after more than three years without an execution.
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The state, on May 3, executed Darryl Barwick in the 1986 murder of Rebecca Wendt in her Panama City apartment. Wendt was found wrapped in a comforter and had been stabbed 37 times.
That followed the April 12 execution of Louis Gaskin in the 1989 murders of a couple in Flagler County. The state on Feb. 23, put to death Donald David Dillbeck, who murdered a woman in 1990 during a carjacking in a Tallahassee mall parking lot.
Dillbeck was the first person executed since Gary Ray Bowles was put to death by lethal injection in August 2019 for a 1994 murder in Jacksonville.
By The Numbers, Florida Death Penalty
Here is a by-the-numbers look at the death penalty in Florida:
— 101: Executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
— 3: Executions this year.
— 0: Executions in 2020, 2021 and 2022
— 8: Executions in 1984 and 2014, tied for the most in a year.
— 84: Age of the oldest current Death Row inmate, Nelson Serrano, who was convicted in a 1997 murder in Polk County.
— 46: Years that William Zeigler has been on Death Row, the longest time of any inmate.
— 297: People on Death Row.
— 294: Men on Death Row.
— 3: Women on Death Row.
— 2: Women who have been executed in Florida.
Source: Florida Department of Corrections
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