STARKE, Fla. -- David Leroy Washington, a former choirboy who stabbed three people to death, died in the electric chair today after holding his daughter on his knee and telling her 'I want you to do better.'
'I'd like to say to the families of all my victims, I'm sorry for all the grief and heartache I brought to them,' Washington said after he was strapped into the electric chair. 'If my death brings them any satisfaction, so be it.'
Washington, 34, the second black man executed in the South in two days and the 22nd man put to death since the Supreme Court dropped its capital punishment ban in 1976, died at 7:09 a.m. He was the seventh man executed in Florida, more than any other state.
The tall, slender condemned man also had last words for the 220 men he left behind on Florida's death row.
He stumbled several times over the words and explained 'I'm kind of nervous, that's all.'
'To all the guys on death row, I'd like to say don't bow down to defeat ... without a fight.'
Washington entered the death chamber with a small smile on his face and chuckled at the words of one of the guards who escorted him.
The condemned man met with his wife and his 12-year-old daughter Florence late Thursday night. The Rev. Joe Ingle said Washington sat her on his lap, lifted her chin and told her 'I'm the one who got me here.' '
The tall, slender condemned man also had last words for the 220 men he left behind on Florida's death row.
He stumbled several times over the words and explained 'I'm kind of nervous, that's all.'
'To all the guys on death row, I'd like to say don't bow down to defeat ... without a fight.'
Washington entered the death chamber with a small smile on his face and chuckled at the words of one of the guards who escorted him.
The condemned man met with his wife and his 12-year-old daughter Florence late Thursday night. The Rev. Joe Ingle said Washington sat her on his lap, lifted her chin and told her 'I'm the one who got me here.'
'I want you to do better,' he told the sobbing child. 'I want you to set some goals for yourself and I want you to hit the books.'
Washington made his daughter repeat what he had said, Ingle reported, and the little girl left in tears. 'Her heart was broken,' Ingle said. 'They were leading her daddy away to kill him.'
'I don't think there was a day he was here that he didn't hate himself for what he had done,' Ingle said.
The parents of Arthur Goode, sex-killer of two small boys who was executed April 5, were among about 40 death penalty protesters standing under a full moon outside the state prison as day began to break.
'We thought we'd try to do a little good,' said Mildred Goode. 'I think if it was enough people it would make a difference.'
Ivon Ray Stanley, 28, died in the Georgia electric chair Thursday for the 1976 slaying of an insurance agent.
Washington was to have been part of the first double execution in the United States in 19 years, but the Supreme Court Thursday upheld a stay for Jimmy Lee Smith, who was scheduled to die a few minutes after Washington.
Smith, described by prison officials as 'delighted,' was moved out of the death chamber he had shared with Washington near 'Old Sparky,' the grim name given the electric chair by inmates at the Florida State Prison.
The high court rejected Washington's final appeal late Thursday night, eight hours before he died.
Washington was awakened at 4:30 a.m. EDT and ate heartily of fried shrimp, fried oysters, french fries, hot rolls, vanilla ice cream and lemonade for his last meal.
'He's in good humor and his spirits seem pretty good,' said prison spokesman Vernon Bradford. 'He ate almost all of his food. They couldn't find a half-pint of ice cream he asked for, so they gave him a quart and he was diving into it.'
Washington was executed one minute after the the expiration of a temporary stay issued by a Miami judge Wednesday.
Washington, the oldest of seven children, killed three Dade County residents in three different robberies over a 12-day span in 1976.
In his confession, he described how he broke into the home of the Rev. Daniel Pridgen, stabbing the 69-year-old minister seven times with a hunting knife as he slept. He shot and stabbed Katherina Birk nine times at her home, stealing $8.
He answered a newspaper ad placed by Frank Meli, a 20-year-old student who wanted to sell his car. Meli was tied to a bed and stabbed 11 times as he begged for his life.
'I think my life was just one big mistake,' Washington said in an interview. 'I had all the best breaks in life, all the right opportunities. Seemed like everything I touched, I destroyed. Family, wife, friends, everything. I just destroyed.'
He said the murders were 'always on my conscience.'
The Supreme Court gave no explanation why it had upheld the stay for Smith, who confessed he stabbed a woman to death in Marianna, Fla., and then killed her 12-year-old daughter because she was a witness. A six-line order said simply a plea from the state of Florida to go ahead with the electrocution of Smith 'is denied.'
