Nearly four decades after murdering a mother and a teenage babysitter in Palm Beach County, Duane Owen was executed by lethal injection Thursday evening at Florida State Prison.
Owen, 62, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. after declining to make a last statement. He was executed for the May 1984 murder of Georgianna Worden, who was severely beaten with a hammer and sexually assaulted in her Boca Raton home.
He also had been sentenced to death for the March 1984 murder of 14-year-old Karen Slattery, who was babysitting at a Delray Beach home. Slattery was stabbed to death.
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“Thirty-nine years and this process is finally over,” Debbi Johnson, the teen victim’s sister, told reporters after the execution.
Johnson, who is now a Monroe County deputy sheriff, said she was 10 when her sister was murdered.
“I was no longer a child at that point in time,” she said. “No kid should have to go through that.”
Johnson was among 21 witnesses, along with eight reporters and Department of Corrections officials, who watched Owen be put to death in a process that started at 6 p.m. Strapped to a gurney and covered in a white sheet, Owen could be seen breathing heavily and making twitching motions as the drugs were administered, but he did not appear to make any movements after 6:06 p.m.
“The execution took place without incident,” Kayla McLaughlin, communications director for the Department of Corrections, told reporters.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 9 signed a death warrant for Owen in the murder of Worden, who was last seen alive by her daughters when they came to say good night while she sat in bed reading a book.
The next morning, one of the daughters found the bedroom door locked and a kitchen window broken. After unlocking the bedroom door, the daughter saw Worden with a pillow over her head and blood in the bedroom, according to court documents. Paramedics were called to the home but determined Worden was dead.
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Owen was executed a day after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request by his attorneys for a stay. The attorneys argued Owen was not mentally competent to be put to death. The Florida Supreme Court last week also issued two rulings refusing to halt the execution.
Owen woke at 7 a.m. Thursday and had a last meal at 9:45 a.m. of a bacon cheeseburger with no bun, onion rings, strawberries, a vanilla milkshake, cherry ice cream and coffee, McLaughlin said. He had no visitors.
Owen was the fourth inmate put to death by the state in less than four months.
The state on May 3 executed Darryl Barwick in the 1986 murder of a woman in her Panama City apartment. 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.
After Owen’s death warrant was signed, his attorneys argued to state and federal courts that he was not competent to be executed. The arguments were based on the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment, and legal precedents that prevent executing people who are not mentally competent.
“Florida has a minimal interest in finality and efficient enforcement of judgments, but Owen, whose delusions and dementia prevent him from rationally understanding the consequences of his execution, has a right in ensuring that his execution comports with the Constitution,” Owen’s attorneys said in a document filed Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court. “This right includes the ability to have meaningful judicial review of the complex constitutional claims he timely raises.”
But two state circuit judges, the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the arguments.
In a filing Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office pointed to an “interest of finality” for the victims’ families and the state.
“The victimization continues to occur to the families and loved ones of Owen’s murder victims,” Moody’s office argued. “Additionally, the State of Florida as a sovereign, is entitled to enforce its laws and carry out this sentence. The longer it is delayed, the greater the assault is on the sovereign’s legitimate interest and that of the families of Owen’s victims.”
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