More than 46 years after he kidnapped, raped and murdered a 6-year-old girl in Brevard County, Bryan Frederick Jennings was put to death by lethal injection Thursday evening at Florida State Prison.
Jennings, 66, was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. and became a record 16th inmate executed this year in Florida. The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected final legal attempts to halt the execution.
Jennings was convicted of murdering Rebecca Kunash on May 11, 1979, in Merritt Island. A 1986 sentencing order said Jennings in the early morning hours went to the window of the child’s bedroom and saw her asleep.
“He forcibly removed the screen, opened the window, and climbed into her bedroom,” the sentencing order by then-Circuit Judge Charles Harris said. “He put his hand over her mouth, took her to his car and proceeded to an area near the Girard Street Canal on Merritt Island.”
The judge wrote that Jennings raped the girl and then slammed her head on the ground, fracturing her skull.
“While she was still alive, defendant (Jennings) took her into the canal and held her head under the water until she drowned,” the sentencing order said.
At the time of the murder, Jennings was a 20-year-old U.S. Marine home on leave from Okinawa, Japan, the order said.
Jennings declined to make a final statement before the lethal-injection process, which involves three drugs, started at 6:02 p.m. Thursday.
He could be seen twitching at 6:04 p.m., with movement stopping about three minutes later. Color had drained from his face by 6:10 p.m., and a health-care worker entered the death chamber at 6:19 p.m. to check for any signs of life.
Jennings woke up at 4 a.m. Thursday and had a last meal of a cheeseburger, french fries and a soda, Jordan Kirkland, communications director for the Florida Department of Corrections, said. Jennings had one visitor Thursday.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for Jennings on Oct. 10, touching off a flurry of legal activity in state and federal courts as the inmate’s attorneys sought to stop the execution.
The attorneys focused heavily on his lack of legal representation in state courts over a three-year period until DeSantis signed the death warrant. That period came after the 2022 death of lawyer Martin McClain, who represented Jennings.
The attorneys argued that Jennings’ due-process rights had been violated. In part, that stemmed from contentions Jennings’ new attorneys did not have adequate time to develop a case to try to prevent the execution after the death warrant was signed.
But the Florida Supreme Court last week rejected the arguments, and the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday followed suit.
Florida’s previous modern-era record for executions in a year was eight in 1984 and 2014. The modern era represents the period since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court opinion halted it.
DeSantis also has signed death warrants for Richard Barry Randolph to be executed Nov. 20 in the 1988 murder of a Putnam County convenience-store manager and for Mark Allen Geralds to be executed Dec. 9 in the 1989 murder of a Bay County woman.
The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected arguments by Randolph’s attorneys aimed at blocking his execution.
As it has done before executions throughout the year, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops asked DeSantis to halt Jennings’ execution and commute his sentence to life in prison without parole.
“Mr. Jennings’ crimes were gravely evil, and it is right that the state should punish them severely,” Michael Sheedy, the conference’s executive director, wrote in a letter to DeSantis. “Nevertheless, even as we pray for the repose of the soul of the victim and for the consolation of her survivors, we ask that you spare Jennings’ life. Every human life, given by God, is sacred. As St. John Paul II wrote, ‘Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity.’”
–Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida
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