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Condemned killer waits on appeals TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - The state has made plans to execute Thomas Provenzano four times this summer. Three times he has won reprieves.
The condemned killer is currently scheduled to go to Florida's electric chair at 7:01 a.m. Friday, 15 years after he opened fire in an Orlando courthouse, fatally injuring two bailiffs and leaving a third paralyzed for life.
But Provenzano, 50, has two appeals still pending and either could result in another stay of execution this week.
The two issues that could save Provenzano are his claim of insanity and the condition of the electric chair - neither of which require any review of the crime that landed him on death row.
In January 1984, Provenzano was an unemployed electrician when he walked into the Orange County Courthouse armed with a shotgun, an assault rifle, a revolver and a knapsack carrying ammunition, all hidden under a large Army-style jacket.
Provenzano was muttering threats against two police officers who had charged him with disorderly conduct five months earlier. He shot three bailiffs when one approached to search him. His victims:
- William Wilkerson, a 60-year-old who had retired from the Navy 14 years earlier as a lieutenant commander, was immediately killed;
- Harry Dalton, a 53-year-old father of six, was left paralyzed and died seven years later.
- Mark Parker, 19 at the time of the shooting, survived but remains paralyzed from the shoulders down.
Gov. Jeb Bush signed Provenzano's death warrant in June and his execution was set for July 7.
Less than 12 hours before his execution, Provenzano won a two-day delay because of his claim of insanity: Under Florida law, a condemned killer cannot be executed without understanding what is going to happen and why.
Provenzano was then scheduled for execution July 9.
But the bloody execution July 8 of Allen Lee ``Tiny'' Davis for the 1982 murders of a pregnant Jacksonville woman and her two young daughters resulted in a longer reprieve for Provenzano.
Florida's high court gave Provenzano a stay of execution until Sept. 14 and ordered trial judges in central Florida to hold hearings on both the electric chair and Provenzano's competency to be executed.
In early August, a trial judge ruled the chair was constitutional; that issue is still being reviewed by Florida's high court.
Three weeks ago, another judge ruled that Provenzano's actions might be bizarre but that he was competent to be executed. A week later, the state Supreme Court gave Provenzano a 10-day extension to his stay of execution from Sept. 14 to Sept. 24.
Last week, the high court heard oral arguments on the question of Provenzano's sanity, and some of the justices expressed concern that the trial judge didn't hear testimony from Provenzano's main witness.
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