Donald Dillbeck’s Execution in Florida Scheduled for Next Month

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After spending three decades on death row, Florida inmate Donald Dillbeck is scheduled to be executed next month.

On January 23, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for the execution of Dillbeck, 59, who was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of Faye Vann in Tallahassee. In 1990, Dillbeck stabbed a 44-year-old woman to death in a shopping mall parking lot after escaping from custody days earlier while serving a life sentence for the shooting death of Florida police officer Lynn Hall.

The execution will mark the first since 2019 for more than 300 Florida inmates on death row.

According to the warrant, Dillbeck’s execution is scheduled for February 23 at 6 p.m

Dillbeck, originally from Texas, was 15 years old when he shot and killed a Lee County Sheriff’s deputy in Fort Myers Beach on April 11, 1979. The high school dropout and runaway from Indiana was sitting inside a stolen car at a closed beach park when Hall responded to a suspicious person complaint and began questioning Hall. Dillbeck reportedly ran away, and Hall chased him on foot and caught him.

In the ensuing struggle, Dillbeck grabbed Hall’s gun and killed him. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder in June 1979.

click to enlarge In June 1990, Dillbeck escaped custody while in an offsite vocational program at a north Florida elementary school. In a Tallahassee shopping mall parking lot, he robbed and killed Vann, who was waiting alone in his car while his family went shopping. Dillbeck stole the car but crashed it nearby and was caught by the police.

Dillbeck was convicted of first-degree murder, armed robbery, and armed robbery and sentenced to death the following year on an 8-4 jury recommendation.

At the sentencing, he told the judge, “I’m really sorry for what happened. I hope not, not because I’m standing here, but because it happened. I’m asking for a life sentence, not for me, but for to my parents.” Dillbeck’s adoptive parents wept on the witness stand, saying the boy they adopted at age 6 was “brain damaged and abused,” according to a March 1991 Gainesville Sun article.

In the years following Dillbeck’s 1991 trial, he and his lawyers pleaded for mercy, saying he suffered brain damage from the abuse he faced as a toddler from his alcoholic mother. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the State of Indiana took custody of Dillbeck when he was 4.

“The punishment the state is seeking is an abomination. The rest of the world seems to know that,” assistant public defender Randy Murrell explained at the time.

“The only abomination in the courtroom today is Donald Dillbeck,” responded assistant state attorney Tom Kirwin, who is seeking the death penalty.

Neither Dillbeck nor his attorney responded to requests for comment. New Times could not reach the family or loved ones of Vann or Hall, the namesake of Lynn Hall Memorial Park in Fort Myers Beach.

In August 2019, Gary Ray Bowles, who killed six men in 1994, became the last person to die by hanging in Florida.

The last death warrant DeSantis signed before Dillbeck’s was in September 2019 for the execution of James Daily, who was convicted of the 1985 murder of 14-year-old Shelly Boggio however, court challenges have delayed the execution. Although the Florida Supreme Court upheld Dailey’s 2021 conviction and sentence, the execution was never rescheduled.

DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin attributes the gap between the executions to the governor’s preoccupation with the COVID-19 pandemic for much of his first term.

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP), a statewide grassroots group seeking to end the death penalty in Florida, wrote a statement opposing Dillbeck’s scheduled execution, saying his childhood was marked by “severe trauma.” and abuse. The group noted that DeSantis signed the warrant on the same day it asked supporters to thank Florida lawmakers for sponsoring legislation to compensate exoneree Robert DuBoise, who spent decades wrongfully imprisoned in Florida.

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