Veterans on Florida's Death Row, Part I
Welcome to the latest series from Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty: Veterans on Florida’s Death Row. This series explores information about veterans who are or have been on Florida's death row.
Welcome to the latest series from Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty: Veterans on Florida’s Death Row.1
Patrick McDowell’s 2024 death sentence raised the issue of veterans being sentenced to death following their service. (Read more here.) A 2015 study by the Death Penalty Information Center found that approximately 10% of prisoners on death row across the country are veterans, and “many more [have] been executed.” (Read more here.)2
Executed
Florida has executed at least 14 military veterans since 1976. This accounts for more than 10% of all of Florida’s executions since 1976. Florida’s full list of executions can be found here.
Chadwick Banks
Chadwick Banks was sentenced to death for two counts of first-degree murder following the jury’s recommendation for death by a vote of 9-3.3 While the trial court found that Banks served in the military, it was assigned “little weight” because it, along with other factors, was “no more than society expects from the average individual.”4
Banks was executed on November 13, 2014.
Oba Chandler
Oba Chandler was sentenced to death for three murders that occurred in September 1994. Chandler previously served in the Marine Corps and was honorably discharged. At sentencing, “the trial court only found that his honorable discharge from the U.S. Marine Corps” was “established as nonstatutory mitigation” but assigned it little weight.5
Chandler was executed on November 15, 2011.
Bennie Demps
Bennie Demps was sentenced to death in 1978 for killing a fellow inmate.6 Regarding his military service, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit wrote in 1989:
On November 20, 1969, Demps enlisted in the United States Marine Corps for a two year period. His service record revealed one special court-martial conviction and two nonjudicial punishments for five assaults, communication of a threat, and disobeying a lawful order. Due to these offenses, after eleven months of service, Demps received a dishonorable discharge in November, 1970. In January, 1979, under a special discharge review program, Demps' dishonorable discharge was upgraded to a general discharge. . . . [T]he record reflects no evidence indicating any overseas combat experience. Rather, the record shows that Demps had been stationed at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.7
Demps was executed on June 7, 2000.
David Funchess
David Funchess was sentenced to death, and his sentence became final in 1981. Funchess was executed by electrocution on April 22, 1986.
While the opinions discussing his case do not mention his military service, news coverage of his execution report that he was a Vietnam veteran.8 One report stated that Funchess had been “diagnosed as suffering from stress stemming from duty in Vietnam.”9 Another report stated that Funcess “returned from the Vietnam War with leg wounds that earned him the Purple Heart, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and eventually an addiction to self-medicating drug addiction.”10
Patrick Hannon
Patrick Hannon was sentenced to death for crimes that occurred in 1991 following a jury’s unanimous recommendation for death.11 His sentence became final on February 21, 1995.12 The record in his case indicated that Hannon “had been unsuccessful in the military.”
Hannon was executed by lethal injection on November 8, 2017.
Paul Howell
Paul Howell was sentenced to death for crimes that occurred in 1992 following the jury’s recommendation for death by a vote of 10-2.13 At sentencing, the trial court considered that “Howell had served in the military and received an honorable discharge,” which the Court assigned “little weight.”14
Howell was executed on February 26, 2014.
Jeffrey Hutchinson
Jeffrey Hutchinson served six years in the U.S. Army, completing Army Ranger training and reaching the rank of Sergeant. Hutchinson was sentenced to death for killing his girlfriend and her three children in 1998. He waived a penalty-phase jury and was given three sentences of death—one for each child. In sentencing Hutchinson to death, the trial court considered that he was “a decorated military veteran of the Gulf War” as mitigation and assigned it “significant weight.” The Florida Supreme Court affirmed his convictions and sentences on direct appeal, and his sentences of death became final in 2004.
Hutchinson was executed on May 1, 2025, after unsuccessfully litigating claims that his execution violated the Eighth Amendment because he did not rationally understand the reason for his execution.
TFDP Prior Coverage of Hutchinson’s Case
Larry Johnson
Larry Johnson was sentenced to death, and his sentence became final in 1984.
In January 1993, when Johnson was under an active death warrant, the Florida Supreme Court issued a decision denying Johnson’s requests for relief. Justice Kogan wrote a specially concurring opinion focusing on Johnson’s military service that, according to Justice Kogan, was not given adequate consideration at trial. Justice Kogan wrote:
When this death warrant is executed, Florida will electrocute a man injured and most probably maimed psychologically while serving in his nation's military in Vietnam and elsewhere. . . . The court record in this case leads me to the disturbing conclusion that the legal system has failed to give Larry Joe Johnson even one particle of credit for his honorable service to his country or for the injury and disability he suffered while in the armed forces of the United States.
Prior to injuries he sustained while on military duty in 1974, Johnson was a man with a good military record of more than twelve years' duration, including stints in the Navy and National Guard. People described him as bighearted and friendly despite being abandoned at birth by both parents and left to his grandmother's care. He was decorated during two tours of duty totaling some fifteen months in Vietnam. Johnson enlisted to serve in Vietnam, and he did so because he had admired the military all his life. His grandmother's home was next to a National Guard installation, where Johnson as a child had watched the men in arms, wanting to be like them. He fulfilled that dream.
One of the men assigned to Johnson's unit in the National Guard testified that, prior to the 1974 accident, Johnson was a good and friendly man who had risen to the rank of sergeant. . . .
But after a freak head injury on military maneuvers in 1974,4 Johnson descended into madness so severe he was hospitalized for ten months. He was ruled disabled, unable to continue his military service. After his later release from hospital and medical discharge from the military, Johnson could not control himself in the military manner he once had mastered. One psychologist said it was shameful that the military psychiatrists had failed to continue treatment of a man whose injury had transformed him into a “time bomb,” a man who had even urged these psychiatrists to see that his own children be taken from him because he knew he could not control his temper any longer.
. . . .
There was psychological testimony at trial suggesting the reasons why Johnson lost control of his own mind. An expert in post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by Vietnam veterans indicated that the 1974 injury not only may have left some brain damage, but it also reawakened the nightmarish experiences Johnson had endured in Vietnam.
One experience in particular had bothered Johnson tremendously: He had witnessed a close friend named Mack drive a truck over a Vietnamese land mine, which exploded. Almost nothing identifiable was left of Mack's body, but Johnson had run forward to try to help. Johnson had searched through the debris and couldn't understand why he could not find Mack. On other occasions in Vietnam, Johnson had a bulldozer blown out from under him; he was held at gunpoint by two Vietnamese; and he witnessed a Vietnamese stab a friend standing next to him.15
Chief Justice Barkett and Justice Shaw joined in the opinion.
Johnson was executed by electrocution on May 8, 1993.16
Michael Lambrix
Michael Lambrix was sentenced to death for crimes that occurred in 1983.
Lambrix went to basic training for the army, where he suffered an injury that caused him to be honorably discharged.17 Throughout the litigation related to his death sentence, Lambrix raised numerous claims. Evidence bout the injuries he sustained at basic training were at the center of his fifth successive postconviction relief, in which he argued that he was “entitled to relief because he recently was able to locate his ex-wife, who allegedly made herself deliberately unavailable until [that point], and she has prepared an affidavit discussing the injury that Lambrix suffered during the army's basic training, which caused him debilitating pain and led him to self-medicate by turning to alcohol and illicit drugs. In addition, Lambrix presented a decision by the Board of Veterans' Appeals and a report by privately retained defense expert Dr. Thomas M. Hyde.”18 In 2013, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the circuit court’s denial of the Lambrix’s claims.19
Lambrix was executed by lethal injection on October 5, 2017.
Bobby Joe Long
Bobby Joe Long was sentenced to death in two separate cases. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Long served in the Vietnam War and was diagnosed with “Traumatic Brain Disease” by the Veterans Administration “as a result of injuries sustained during his military service. . . . Following his diagnosis, he was discharged and given a ’service-connected disability rating,’ but received little or no treatment from the military or the VA for his brain damage.”20
Long was executed by lethal injection on May 23, 2019.
Glen Ocha
Glen Ocha was sentenced to death for crimes that occurred in the fall of 1999. Although evidence of his military service was presented at sentencing, the trial court afforded “no weight to Ocha’s military service” as mitigation.21
Ocha was executed on April 5, 2005.
Manuel Pardo
Manuel Pardo was sentenced to nine sentences of death in 1988. In mitigation, the trial court considered that Pardo “he had served in the military.”22 In addition, Pardo served as a police officer before the crimes.23 His sentences of death became final in 1991.
Pardo was executed on December 11, 2012.
Daniel “Danny” Rolling
Danny Rolling was sentenced to death in 1994 for killing five University of Florida students in 1990 following the jury’s unanimous recommendations for death.24 According to a news article, Rolling was “[k]icked out of the Air Force in 1972 after getting busted for drug possession.”25 His father was a “decorated Korean War veteran.”26
Rolling was executed on October 25, 2006.
Arthur Rutherford
Arthur Rutherford was sentenced to death for crimes that occurred in 1985 following the jury’s recommendation for death by a vote of 7-5.27 At trial, the defense presented mitigation evidence “regarding . . . the fact that his involvement in Vietnam had changed him in that he had become jittery and nervous, had nightmares, and experienced night sweats. Rutherford testified on his own behalf in the penalty phase . . . regarding his military service, including his horrifying experiences in Vietnam and his numerous military commendations.”28 While the trial court considered this (and other) evidence, it did not find any nonstatutory mitigating circumstances.29
On postconviction, the Florida Supreme Court noted that trial counsel testified that “‘Rutherford did not want [him] to use any military background or record, and would not discuss Vietnam service or his Marine Corps service in general’ until he unexpectedly did so on the stand during the penalty phase.”30
Rutherford was executed by lethal injection on October 18, 2006.31
Newton Slawson
Newton Slawson was sentenced to four sentences of death for crimes that occurred in 1989. The jury’s votes for death were 8-4, 7-5, 7-5, and 9-3.32 The record reflects that Slawson “served in the Navy for slightly over two years as an operations specialist and received an honorable discharge.”33
Slawson was executed on May 16, 2003.
This post was updated after it was originally posted to add information thanks to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Due to the age of some records and the unavailability of some information, it is possible that the lists in this series are incomplete. If you know of a veteran who is not included on the lists in this series, please let me know. Also, for purposes of thoroughness, this series includes those who were discharged from the military.
Banks v. State, 842 So. 2d 788, 790 (Fla. 2003).
Banks v. State, 700 So. 2d 363, 365 (Fla. 1997).
Chandler v. State, 702 So. 2d 186, n.3 (Fla. 1997).
Demps v. Dugger, 874 F.2d 1385, 1386 (11th Cir. 1989).
Id. at 1390.
AP, Vietnam Veteran Is Put to Death in Florida, N.Y. Times (April 23, 1986), https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/23/us/vietnam-veteran-is-put-to-death-in-florida.html; Headsman, 1986: David Funchess, Vietnam War veteran, Executed Today (April 22, 2020), https://www.executedtoday.com/2020/04/22/1986-david-funchess-vietnam-war-veteran/
AP, supra note 3.
Headsman, supra note 3.
Hannon v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corrs., 622 F. Supp. 2d 1169, 1178 (M.D. Fla. 2007).
Id.
Howell v. State, 109 So. 3d 763, 766 (Fla. 2013).
Id.
Johnson v. Singletary, 612 So. 2d 575, 577-80 (Kogan, J., concurring specially).
Johnson executed in Florida electric chair, UPI (May 8, 1993), https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/05/08/Johnson-executed-in-Florida-electric-chair/9346736833600/.
Lambrix v. State, 124 So. 3d 890, 903 (Fla. 2013).
Id. at 900-01.
Id.
Florida Executes Mentally Ill Vietnam Veteran Diagnosed with “Traumatic Brain Disease, Death Penalty Info. Ctr. (May 23, 2019), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/florida-executes-mentally-ill-vietnam-veteran-diagnosed-with-traumatic-brain-disease
Ocha v. State, 826 So. 2d 956, 960 (Fla. 2002).
Pardo v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corrs., 587 F.3d 1093, 1096 (11th Cir. 2009).
Id.
Rolling v. State, 695 So. 2d 278, 283 (Fla. 1997).
Danny Rolling: The True Story Behind the Killer Who Inspired ‘Scream’, Biography (last updated Oct. 14, 2020), https://www.biography.com/crime/danny-rolling-scream-killer-gainesville.
Id.
Rutherford v. State, 727 So. 2d 216, 218 (Fla. 1998). At his original trial, the jury’s recommendation for death was 8-4. Id. at 217. However, the trial court declared a mistrial. Id.
Id. at 218.
Id.
Id. at 225.
Nathan Crabbe, State executes convicted killer, Gainesville Sun (Oct. 19, 2006), https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/2006/10/19/state-executes-convicted-killer/31500018007/.
Slawson v. State, 796 So. 2d 491, 493 n.1 (Fla. 2001).
Id. at 497.
this is a phenomenal, thorough series about the atrocity of the death penalty as experienced by Florida death row veterans- thank you for taking the time to put this together
The death penalty is grotesque.