Legislative Changes and Lasting Impact

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If you want to browse with confidence, get preree qualified online with no impact on your credit score and shop cars within your budget From luxury cars to family rides Carmax has options for almost every price range, including more than twenty five thousand cars priced under twenty five thousand dollars. So hey, want to get started? Just head to cararmax dot com for details and get pre qualified today Want to drive? Carmax Hey there folks. It is Wednesday, june twenty fourth and a question for you Can you actually be too old to die. That is the question in Florida right now for a planned execution tomorrow night And that person would be the oldest person that state has ever executed. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ, Robes, once again, an execution where the debate is not about guilt or innocence. It's about something else. Yeah, it's about whether or not it's cruel and unusual to execute an elderly man with underlying health conditions. We're talking about seventy four year old Dusty Ray Spencer. He is set to die tomorrow Thursday at six PM Eastern time by lethal injection. And when you hear, Robes, yes, seventy four year old man. He's sick. Why would they do this You hear what he did? Rges, you have a hard time giving this guy mercy. That is very much true. and yet you hear from his attorneys saying that he should be spared because now he is a quote sick. Old man. Was anyady by it Uh yeah, I bet he is And That's the thing, Roe. He killed a forty year old woman in a way in a manner. That go back and tell me about the mercy she got. I know it's a comparative thing. and Rose, I struggle with this in this story because we're supposed to be better. As people are saying, give this guy mercy. He's seventy four years old and he's sick. And we have to be better than he was when he beat the absolute hell out of this woman and killed her some thirty, whatever years ago. So R, That's a balance and that's a difficult one at this point to try to balance, but aren't we supposed to be better than a killer? So aren't we supposed to give him mercy? That's part of the argument. And you mentioned he beat and stabbed her. He did it in front of her child. It is awful st. And he promised to do it. So not only did Dusty Ray Spencer let down his wife and his victim But so did the criminal justice system, and we'll get into that as well, because there are many people who let down Karen Spencer and allowed for her death to take place when She was threatened with it multiple times, was told it was going to happen And yet No one saved her. Isn't that crazy? This is a case where he He did exactly what he said he was going to do. And when he made the threat, he was already in jail. He did crazy. Yeah, he did it on a cell phone in a jail.. So it was recorded. So the court, it's documented that he literally threatens his wife that he's going to finish the job and then he's released on And why was he in jail the first time Robes? For beating his wife? This story is insanity This story is insanity. Yeah, it did lead to some changes in Florida and that's a positive out of all of it. But here we are Robes. Obviously DeSantis is not going to stop it. I think he still has a case in front of the Spreme C. Supreme court He does. Yes. So Spencer's attorneys on Monday of this week formally filed a request the Supreme Court of the United States to intervene in his execution. Their argument I'll give it to you exactly how they worded it is that Florida's lethal injection process is cruel and unusual when applied to a seventy four year old man suffering from significant medical conditions, including cirrhosis of the liver And portal hypertension. Okay, is all that Robes? Do you get to a point where it is cruel and unusual to execute a sickly old man? That might be true It might be true, but again, I'm going to refer back even to our criminal justice system where if he had actually been put to death, if he had actually been executed in a timely fashion, he wouldn't be seventy four years old. Some would argue he's lucky as held to be as old as he is given the crime he committed and the conviction he received with the sentence he got our judicial system until he got A reason to make an argument for not killing them. That's kind of what's happening I was saying you should have done it earlier And so now, yes, there are headlines that this is cruel, this is terrible to execute an elderly, sickly man, Spencer's spiritual advisor going and making the rounds as well, asking Governor DeSantis to stop the lethal injection. He's calling this a nursing home execution. So you can see people jumping on this theme that this is just not okay to execute an elderly person. Is it because of his age or that he's a sickly old person? We've seen seventy year olds run marathons. so. Is that the argument more so at least the way you see it's not just age's that he's It's both Yes. And you make a good point. My dad ran the Berlin marathon at the age of sixty nine. He would not have this argument that this guy had that I'm a sickly old man. No. And by the way, just for a point of reference, the oldest person ever executed in modern times here in the United States actually didn't even happen that long ago We're talking twenty eighteen in the state of Alabama Alabama executed an eighty three year old man. His name was Walter Moody. So Other states have had zero issue executing elderly folks. Yeah, it's I guess it's fairly rare robes that they get over the age of eighty to eighty three year old is the record, but I think that was an eighty year old or something in there as well. So this is rare, but so many of the executions we see, yeah, they are in their sixties and seventies pl because they've been on death row for thirty forty years. That's the deal. Yes. a lot of these crimes, when you commit them in your thirties and then yeah, you're on death row for thirty, forty years. Yeah, you are getting up there in age. And like I said, a lot of the arguments on the other side of it is they shouldn't have been allowed to get that old. Thats The system our broken system, the way it's set up right now, that it takes so long to execute somebody Better get pretty comfortable executing older folks because that's who is on death row at this point in large numbers. I don't see the number I know we've reported on it before, but the average age of a death row inmate, the average age of somebody executed. it's obviously it's up there. These aren't young people on death row. In fact, sometimes roads we've had somewere the guy' forty, forty two what the hell Yeah, they're in their early twenties sometimes when they commit the crimes, but it's just rare. So seventy four they talked about Rot He would need to physically be placed on the gurney. Like he can't move around. He needs help to even get in place to be executed. What was the argument they have about his skin His skin is now so loose that you would have to tighten it in some way just to get a vein. Yeah, that sounds horrific. It seems pretty dramatic, but yes, I hear all the arguments. you even have, look in the Catholic Church has always been outspoken against the death penalty and executing folks. But I thought this was interesting. The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a letter to DeSantis, but they they're throwing everything at this case to try and stop the execution, including the fact that they claim he was sexually abused as a child by his father, had a paranoid personality disorder. Look, a lot A lot of these death row inmates do have horrific stories that led them to a life of crime. And look, that argument has never worked before when it comes to leniency or sparing someone's life because they had a tough childhood Should it I don't know. I'm sure yes, plenty of experts have gone up there and testified that it should factor in Okay, well until it does and again, Robes he's hade was a ninety two ninety two. was that thirty whereere are we thirty four? thirty four years ago thirty four years ago. Well, he had a lot of time to make that argument. and now here we are say it all the time, Robes att the end, they always want to live. Yeah. And guess what? he had a lot of time To make a different choice. Let's get into the crime itself. It did happen on january eighteenth, nineteen ninety two. Yes, he murdered his wife, Karen Spencer look, this had been years of domestic violence and domestic abuse and First attack, criminal attack He attacked her two weeks before Christmas in nineteen ninety one He covered her nose and her mouth with his one hand choked her with the other and he was sent to jail for there for that, okay He goes to prison, he makes a call to her. He says and this is verifiable. When I get out, I'm going to finish when I what I started Okay, they hear it. The judge sets his bail at five thousand. He was released. He comes back a few days later on january fourth, attacks his wife, smashes her face in with an iron Her seventeen year old son intervenes and they call police He's out on bail for attacking her He's never rearrested because The cops couldn't find him. Don't know where he is guy who has now verifiably beaten you twice put in jail after the first one The second one. We can't find them. And by the way, on record, him saying I'm going to finish the job that I started. And then he's released. Can you tell me from my clarity, I couldn't figure out if they knew Did they not find out about the transcript of the cell phone call until later or was that known before she actually ended up getting killed. I don't know the answer to that. the direct threat that they need to act on. And here's the deal. I don't know if they knew it, but it was available Did they go through it? Did they document it? Did they bring it up don't know, but it was there for them to be able to hear and document whether they did or not in a timely fashion. I don't know, but I thought it was just egregious. afterfter he makes these threats, comes back, it's only stopped because of her son And the police are just like,, we don't know where he is. And according to a lot of the reporting around this She gave them specific places to where to find him, and they just didn't follow up. Okay At this point, Robes, after he got out of jail and after that second attack, she should have been I mean she damned there should have been in police protective cont. Absolutely. R. So sixteen days. After that january fourth attack where police say can't find him, he comes back And he starts brutally stabbing and beating her to death in front of her teenage son. He's sleeping, her seventeen year old son is sleeping He hears his mother screaming in the backyard and he finds his stepfather hitting his mom with a brick He goes to get a shotgun And he's going to defend his mom. But unfortunately the shotgun jamm ire it so we started to try and hit him over the head with it, right? Spencer leaves and goes back and gets a knife And he's slamming his mom's head into a concrete side of the house. When he gets the knife, the son runs away to go get help By the time he comes back Spencer's gone and his mom has bled to death What this kid was seventeen eighteen? seventeen years old seventeen. Okay. So imagine that. hears his mom screaming. He sleep. He goes out and see this is stepdad at this point. Yeah. Rpes, it was serious enough, he immediately goes and gets a gun and tries to shoot the guy. Yes It was that, but his immediate thought was I need to shoot this man based on what he was seeing Bros, what they describe in this attack is some of this is one of the more horrific crimes that I haveve seen and we've covered because of the brutality to where the police Did't say was it the prosecutor that said he didn't go out to kill He went there to make her feel this And Robes the kid they said there was almost conversation going on during the attack where the kid is trying to get the guy to stop and he's yelling at the kid, She messed up my life. Like he is enraged sllamming a woman's head against a brick House wall on the outside while the sun is watching. Okay, now go back and let's talk about the mercy This seventy four year old should be given. It's tough, Rbes. Right. We're supposed to feel sorry for the fact that he might suffer for those few minutes. That when a lethal injectionion or a cocktail of drugs is injected into him It's very hard to feel sympathy for someone. This wasn't a crime of passion. This wasn't someone who snapped. this isn't someone who Reretted his decision, felt sorry for it It was just a bad moment. No. this was a brutal, vicious, planned out and repeated attack. I mean, he said he was going to finish the job He followed through. He gave a heads up that he was going to kill somebody And that information was there for authorities to see This is an awful one. Look, I this is and like I said, Robes, we are supposed to be better than he was in that moment. We're not supposed to be vengeful. We're supposed to look and be better. And being better requires us to give mercy to someone who did something monstrous. That's a high bar for some people, but I get it. And I also get why somebody would say, Are you effing kidding me after what he did to her? I don't give a damn how old he is if you have to wheel him in there in a wheelchair Justice needs to be served. Exactly. So look, we're waiting to hear if the Supreme Court even acknowledges the case. They don't have to at all, but that's his last hope because I think it's very fair to say that Governor DeSantis will not be stepping in. He's aware of all that's fair to say. Yes. He signed the death warrant, I think May end of May. So he was aware of all of these extxtenuated circumstances, he was aware of his age and he said, yeah, here's my John Hancock. Yeah. I'm good with this.. So he has no hope for that particular governor making any sort of effort in his direction. He's signing these things so often. We need to change the term. G me your John Hancock to. Give me your Ron Deantis. Yes, exactly. signure Pro, he's signing, put in front of, put in front of. He will sign it Every time we say that and we talk about Florida, it's like clearing the rolls of the death Clearing out Dath Row repeatedly make the point He is doing what the law says he's supposed to do He is giving justice to these families. What are we waiting for? He is enforcing the law. He is and in that regard, ropes Ch change the law if you want to, but he's exactly. I think that's where we are. But speaking of changing the law, when we come back, we're going to tell you. So this obviously is a horrible dark story. But there was a silver lining because what happened to Karen Spencer Well, it may have prevented that same scenario from happening to another woman. We'll tell you the laws that changed because of her murder One thing we've learned is that life doesn't always follow a schedule. 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