Bush signs death warrant for inmate who killed another prisoner

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A child molester once convicted of threatening former Vice President Dan Quayle is set to die May 25 for killing another inmate. That date is the 25th anniversary of Florida's first execution since the death penalty was restored in 1976.

Gov. Jeb Bush signed a death warrant Wednesday for John Blackwelder, who received a death sentence after pleading guilty to murdering convicted killer Raymond Wigley. He was slain on May 6, 2000 at Columbia Correctional Institution in Lake City.

Blackwelder, 49, formerly of Fort Pierce, testified he wanted to commit a crime to get the death penalty because he was unable to accept life in prison. He was serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in St. Lucie County but insisted he was innocent.

The execution, by lethal injection, is set for 6 p.m. on May 25 at Florida State Prison in Starke.

Anti-death penalty activist Abe Bonowitz compared Blackwelder's death wish to "suicide by cop" in which people try to end their lives by doing something to make police shoot them.

"This time it's suicide by governor," said Bonowitz, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Blackwelder will be the seventh such death penalty volunteer to be executed since Bush took office in 1999, he said.

"Poor Gov. Bush is in a stuck position," Blackwelder wrote in an April 20 letter to another anti-death penalty activist, Hannah Floyd.

"Let's say he does not sign the death warrant, it will tell anyone with LWPOP (life without probation or parole) he has a 'license to kill,'" Blackwelder wrote. "If the governor signs the warrant then it sends a different message, and that is anyone that has a LWPOP can now get state assisted suicide by killing an inmate or staff."

The Florida Supreme Court affirmed Blackwelder's conviction and death sentence in July after an automatic appeal. He then filed a motion to waive any more appeals.

Blackwelder said he killed Wigley, 39, of Fort Worth, Texas, because he was harassing him for a sexual relationship. Investigators said it was a consensual relationship.

Prison guards found Wigley, also serving a life sentence, with a sheet tied around his neck and bleeding from the head.

Wigley and John Marek, who was sentenced to death, were convicted of the rape, torture and murder of Adella Maria Simmons in 1983. The 47-year-old secretary was on her way back from a vacation when her car broke down on the Florida Turnpike near Jupiter.

The pair offered to give Simmons a lift to an emergency phone but instead drove 60 miles to Dania, where her body was found the next morning in a lifeguard shack.

Marek, 42, remains on death row.

Blackwelder was also convicted in 1991 on federal charges of threatening Quayle. He had called the Secret Service, Miami television stations and the TV series "America's Most Wanted," saying he would "eliminate" Quayle and "put him on slab" unless he received $10 million.

During the 1970s, Blackwelder served a nine-year sentence for a sexual assault in Miami.