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June 15 (UPI) -- Florida executed convicted murderer Duane Owen on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch effort seeking a delay. Owen, 62, was convicted in the 1984 deaths of a mother of two and a teenage girl in separate crimes in Palm Beach County.
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He was executed by lethal injection scheduled for 6 p.m. and was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m., WPTV and the Palm Beach Post reported.
Owen did not receive any visitors before his death and declined to give a final statement.
His last meal included a bacon cheeseburger without the bun, onion rings, strawberries, a milkshake, cherry ice cream and coffee.
Hours before his execution, friends of victim Karen Slattery gathered to remember their loved one, WPTV reported.
"Today is actually a good day because this day is long coming," Mary Kay Lorne, who said Slattery was a babysitter for her children, told WPTV. "Very sweet, she was just so loving to our kids, and it's still so hard though."
Lisa Fusaro, an attorney with the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, had asked the Supreme Court to step in Monday, saying Owen's "psychotic delusions and dementia" didn't allow him the ability to understand his crime and upcoming execution.
That effort was rejected by the Supreme Court in a brief statement late Wednesday without explanation. State officials said a delay would not be in the public's best interest. Owen's execution is set for 6 p.m. Thursday at the Florida State Prison.
"Now before this court, just days before his scheduled execution, Owen repackages most of the same evidence as a claim that he is insane to be executed," Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said in a court filing Tuesday.
The Death Penalty Information Center said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis initially granted a stay for Owen so he could undergo a psychiatric examination and appointed the examining psychiatrists who found him sane, dissolving the stay after three days.
The center argued that Owen was sentenced by a non-unanimous jury.
"Florida allowed judges to issue death sentences based on recommendations from non-unanimous juries until a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case Hurst vs. Florida held the practice unconstitutional," the center said.
"Mr. Owen did not receive relief under that ruling after the Florida Supreme Court determined that the rule would not apply retroactively to 169 prisoners who had completed their direct appeals before 2002."
The center said two of the three other men executed in Florida in 2023 were also sentenced by non-unanimous juries.
Owen was convicted in the stabbing death of Karen Slattery, a 14-year-old freshman at a Boca Raton Catholic school, who was babysitting two children when Owen broke in and sexually assaulted her.
He used a hammer to bludgeon to death Georgianna Worden, 38, a college instructor who was asleep in her Boca Raton home when Owen broke in. Her two children were unharmed.
