Dusty Ray Spencer was put to death by lethal injection Thursday at Florida State Prison in Starke for his wife’s murder more than three decades ago in Orange County.
Spencer, 74, became the oldest person put to death by the state in the modern era. He was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m., according to the state Department of Corrections.
The execution came about two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied the latest request for a stay from Spencer’s attorneys.
Spencer is the ninth Death Row inmate executed by lethal injection this year, a pace slightly behind Florida’s modern era record of 19 executions conducted last year.
Opponents of the death penalty included Spencer’s age in arguments that also pointed to him being a survivor of sexual abuse by his father, having overcome substance addictions, and having changed for the better while on Death Row.
Jeff Hood, Spencer’s spiritual advisor, described the state’s pending action as a “nursing home execution.”
“The fact that Dusty Ray Spencer is being executed at his age, in his health, says everything we need to know about how haywire this entire system has gone,” Hood said in a June 18 conference call.
Among arguments from Spencer’s attorneys rejected last Thursday by the Florida Supreme Court was that the execution would constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment given his advanced age.
The Florida Supreme Court noted, “The only age-based exemption from execution recognized by the United States Supreme Court is for individuals under the chronological age of eighteen when they committed the offense.”
The prior oldest inmate executed by the state was Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, who was put to death Oct. 14, 2025 for the 1996 deaths of two women in Hillsborough County.
According to court records, Spencer had a violent history with his wife, Karen, before stabbing her to death in the backyard of their home on Jan. 18, 1992.
A little more than a month earlier, records state Spencer choked, hit, and threatened to kill his wife after questioning her about withdrawing money from a bank for their painting business. Dusty Spencer was jailed, but Karen later requested he spend the holidays at home.
On Jan. 4, her teenage son intervened when he awoke to find Dusty Spencer hitting Karen Spencer with a clothes iron.
Dusty Spencer fled, only to return less than two weeks later, when her son found his mother being hit by a brick in their backyard. The son grabbed a rifle from his mother’s bedroom but it misfired. As Karen Spencer begged for the attack to stop, her head was slammed against a concrete wall and Dusty Spencer threatened the teenager with a knife.
When police arrived, Karen Spencer was dead.
“She had been stabbed several times in the chest, had cuts on her face and arms, and suffered blunt force trauma to the back of her head,” records state.
Spencer was charged with first degree murder, along with aggravated assault, attempt to commit murder in the first degree and aggravated battery, Spencer was sentenced to death on December 21, 1992 and resentenced to death on January 18, 1995.
In the resentencing order, Circuit Judge Belvin Perry noted that Karen Spencer was “alive and conscious” throughout the beating.
“The stark terror she must have felt (knowing the prior threats by the Defendant to take her life) as her life slipped away from her; the humiliation as the Defendant lifted her clothing exposing her private parts to her son, while she was laying there bleeding, in pain, pleading for the Defendant to stop as he bashed her head against a concrete wall, is beyond comprehension,” Perry wrote. “The victim’s acute awareness of the Defendant’s continued assault in the face of her pleas makes this an especially cruel murder.”
Spencer likely won’t hold the distinction of being the oldest executed inmate for long.
Dennis Sochor, 74, is scheduled to be put to death July 14 for the death of an 18-year-old woman he met at a New Year’s celebration in a Broward County bar 44 years ago.
Sochor is 12 days younger than Spencer. The warrant signed by DeSantis scheduled the execution 19 days after Spencer’s execution.
–Jim Turner, News Service of Florida
JimboXYZ says
We all have neighbors that are an FCSO 911 domestic call away from that same description of a crap show murder ? Sentenced to death row Dec 1992, resentenced in Jan 1995. when it takes them +/-34 years to get around to doing something that should’ve happened Jan 1995 at the latest ? That’s where the bleeding heart liberals have a lawyer that has only the fact that they didn’t do the deed and allowed him to continue to live to be 74, that he became a model death row inmate for the time ticking off the clock ? How much money & resources could be saved for a more timely execution ? Overcrowding issues disappear, Hurricane sheltering or dare I say it, Covid issues for social distancing for “dead men walking” disappear too. The show lasts 15 minutes tops, they found a way to drag this out for 34 years. More fraud & abuse that needs to be eliminated ? Not one of these stale +/- 30 year executions was a wrongful conviction of an innocent DRI, all of them were slam dunks. Give them their last grail meals and move on from the misery they created for themselves & the rest of society. There are 8 billion plus & growing, there are bound to be a few more bad eggs in the human race.
That recent Bunnell woman with 3 kids, yet another perfect example of early stages ? Putting her away for up to life sentences for showing up and making drama like that ? And the BF admitting to egging it on, taking that much credit, claiming she was a good person because she wasn’t going to be released for bail she couldn’t raise anyway. All she needed to do was bring a gun or knife to that crap show and we’d have another long term incarceration situation with the potential for an execution. If you can’t get along with someone, get away from them, stay away from them or get off the planet Earth yourself ? There’s only so much anyone can empower for self inflicted for sticking around another that clearly demonstrates they are a toxic human being. Gotta limit interactions with those folks for the damage they can do as their malfunction.
This 74 year old dude was sexually abused by his father, you would think after that, he would be the last one to domestically abuse another. He overcame substance abuse ? That generally should happen in prison, there aren’t supposed to be drugs in the place. There’s no other choice to beat substance abuse. And if there are substances to abuse. That needs to be dealt with for how it got into the prison. It’s not like the prison is a grow house for marijuana or opium plants ?
Pogo says
“…When people see executions for distributing South Korean movies or speaking out against the government, the message becomes clear…”
https://travelbinger.com/5-countries-that-still-hold-public-executions-in-the-21st-century
EC: File
Will this appear — ever? Will all comments be delayed for 24 to 48 hours?
Who knows, and who cares?
R.S. says
In jail at age 74, he was no danger to anyone. Why on earth kill him? If at least, there’d be a deterrent effect on others. But there is not: Empirical data demonstrates that states with the death penalty do not have lower homicide rates than non-death penalty states. Overwhelming consensus across criminological research and authoritative bodies indicates that capital punishment has no proven unique deterrent effect on violent crime [AI response]. And there’s no regret or punishment when one’s dead. Ugly Baby-Face DeSatan getting his jollies!