STARKE, Fla. – Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is condemning the execution of Bryan Jennings, arguing the state acted out of political motivation rather than justice.
Jennings, a former U.S. Marine Corps veteran, “was the sixth veteran executed this year in Florida — a 66-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran who spent nearly fifty years on death row.” His execution was scheduled just two days after Veterans Day, “decades after abandoning its legal and moral responsibilities to him,” the group said in its statement.
According to FADP, Jennings was convicted of the murder of 6-year-old Rebecca Kunash in 1979. In the statement, the organization disputed that “nothing about Bryan’s execution tonight honors her memory or protects the people of this state.”
FADP argues the execution represents “the truth of a reactive administration that selects who lives and dies based on political opportunity.”
The organization notes that “the governor of Florida has the sole discretion on whether or when to set a person for execution. The decision-making process is conducted entirely in secret.”
FADP asserts that Gov. Ron DeSantis failed to make clear whether Jennings’ case received a clemency review meant to “include evidence of his growth and redemption in the intervening 37 years.”
The organization condemned the decision to execute Jennings and claimed it was a political response to an unrelated case involving Ronald Exantus, who had been found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing a 6-year-old child. Exantus was convicted of assault against other family members and sentenced to prison.
Florida officials expressed outrage after Exantus’ release, posting on X (formerly Twitter), “‘convicted child killers won’t see the light of day. We have a three drug cocktail that Kentucky is free to borrow to finish the job.’”
Gov. DeSantis posted separately that it was “[u]nbelievable that this scum bag was let out of prison in Kentucky after serving a mere fraction of his sentence for murdering a six-year-old.”
FADP notes the state scheduled Jennings’ execution less than 24 hours after that statement.
The swift timing raises questions about whether the Exantus case influenced Jennings’ death warrant. FADP said, “the only logical conclusion is that after nearly half a century of indifference, Florida suddenly rushed to kill him because of a convenient political subplot.”
FADP also claims Jennings’ case included constitutional violations. The organization states his multiple trials “were rife with constitutional errors, snitch testimony, allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and non-unanimous juries.”
Jennings also lacked legal representation when the warrant was signed. FADP says he “had been without state counsel for more than three years after his previous lawyer died in 2022, which is a direct violation of Florida law requiring continuous representation for death-sentenced individuals.”
The organization argues these actions illustrate why “Florida’s death penalty system has become unrecognizable from the one the law promises.”
FADP concluded that “reactive lawlessness has no place in the ‘Free State of Florida.’”
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