Florida man convicted of killing 2 women whose bodies were found in a pond is set to be executed

STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man convicted of killing two women whose bodies were found in a rural pond is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday evening.

Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, is set to receive a lethal injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke under a death warrant signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. It would be Florida’s 14th death sentence carried out in 2025, further extending the state record for executions in a single year.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, followed by Texas with five.

Smithers was was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1999.

According to court records, Smithers met Christy Cowan and Denise Roach on different dates in May 1996 at a Tampa motel to pay them for sex. At the time, he was doing landscape maintenance on a 27-acre (11-hectare) property that included three ponds in rural Plant City, Florida.

On May 28, 1996, the property owner — who had met Smithers in church where he was a Baptist deacon — stopped by to find Smithers cleaning an axe in the carport, which he claimed to be using to trim tree limbs. The property owner noticed a pool of blood in the carport, and Smithers told her that someone must have come by and killed a small animal, according to court records.

The woman contacted law enforcement, and a sheriff’s deputy met her later that day at the property. The blood had been cleaned up, but the deputy noticed drag marks leading to one of the ponds, according to court records. That’s where authorities found the bodies of Cowan and Roach. Both women had been severely beaten, strangled and left in the pond to die.

The Florida Supreme Court denied an appeal from Smithers last week. His attorneys had argued that his age should make him ineligible for execution under the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Although Smithers would be one of the oldest people ever executed in Florida, the justices ruled that the elderly are not categorically exempt from the death penalty.

An appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court was still pending.

A total of 35 men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and at least eight other people are scheduled to be put to death during the remainder of 2025.

Norman Mearle Grim Jr., 65, is scheduled for Florida’s 15th execution on Oct. 28. He was convicted of raping and killing his neighbor, whose body was found by a fisherman near the Pensacola Bay Bridge in 1998.

Bryan Fredrick Jennings, 66, is set for Florida’s 16th execution on Nov. 13. He was convicted of raping and killing a 6-year-old girl after abducting her from her central Florida home in 1979.

Florida executions are carried out using a three-drug injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.

___

Follow David Fischer on the social platform Bluesky: ‪@dwfischer.bsky.social‬