U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas concluded the prolonged legal saga of a convicted murderer this week. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court decided not to intervene in the case of Bryan Frederick Jennings, a 66-year-old former Marine, who was sentenced to death for the 1979 kidnapping, rape, and murder of a 6-year-old girl in Florida.

The succinct order from the court stated: “The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.”

Jennings had submitted a last-minute appeal on November 7 in hopes of avoiding his scheduled execution by lethal injection. The execution is set for 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Florida State Prison near Starke, a small town approximately 25 miles northeast of Gainesville.

This facility, commonly known as “Raiford Prison,” serves as Florida’s death row. In 2025, the execution team at Bradford County has been notably active, with Jennings becoming the 16th person executed this year under the direction of Governor Ron DeSantis.

Prosecutors achieved their desired verdict through a series of three trials. Jennings was twice found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of 6-year-old Rebecca “Becky” Kunash in Brevard County. However, both convictions were overturned on appeal.

Ultimately, Jennings received a final death sentence in 1986.

The crime itself was particularly brutal.

On May 10, 1979, Becky went to sleep. Even late that night, around 11 p.m., when her father Robert Kunash last checked on her, nothing was amiss, according to an account by USA Today.

“I love you,” the girl’s father told her. “Catch ya in the morning.”

He never did.

Later that night, Jennings removed the screen covering the little girl’s unlocked window and brought her to his car. Then, he took her to a nearby canal, sexually assaulted her, “swung her by her legs to the ground with such force that she fractured her skull,” and drowned her by forcing her head under water for a full 10 minutes, according to court records obtained by Tampa-based Fox affiliate WTVT.

The Kunash family did not realize the girl was missing until 7 a.m. the next day. That morning, Patricia Kunash opened her daughter’s bedroom door to see a curtain moving cruelly in the breeze of the still-open window, the only trace of the horrific abduction.

During trial, prosecutors showed that Jennings was drawn to the girl’s night light after a night out drinking while on leave from the Marines. The killer, awaiting orders, was staying with his mother and aunt on Merritt Island after a deployment to Okinawa, Japan.

Jennings, who described himself as a “mad dog,” was arrested on a traffic warrant that day as well. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials were searching for the missing girl. A fisherman found the child’s body along the Banana River – about half a mile away from home.

The evidence was overwhelming against Jennings.

Investigators found he matched the description of a man seen in the neighborhood around the time of the child’s disappearance. Shoe prints near the Kunash home matched the shoes Jennings was wearing. The man’s fingerprints were found on Becky’s windowsill. And, when arrested, Jennings’ hair and clothes were still wet.

The killer also quickly confessed.

During an interview with detectives later on the day of the grim discovery, Jennings said he “always had this thing to look into windows.”

“That’s all it was supposed to be,” he said, according to an archived report by Florida Today – which was cited by USA Today in their own reporting. “I don’t know why I did it. It’s just something I did.”

In the failed bid to stay his execution, Jennings’ attorney argued his client sometimes lacked a lawyer after being sentenced to death.

“Florida’s failure to ensure continuous post-conviction counsel violates due process and the constitutional guarantee of meaningful access to the courts and denies Mr. Jennings of his protected property right in that continuous representation,” the petition reads. “Although state law mandates continuous state post-conviction representation for all death-sentenced prisoners. Mr. Jennings was left with no representation in state courts for more than three years.”

That lengthy absence of counsel “offends the basic due process principle that a condemned prisoner must have a fair and meaningful opportunity to be heard” and violates both the Eighth and 14th Amendments, Jennings’ attorney argued.

In the end, those arguments fell on deaf ears.

DeSantis, for his part, defended this year’s record execution numbers.

“Some of these crimes were committed in the ’80s,” the governor recently said, WTVT reported. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

In the end, the Kunash family itself would be denied.

The ensuing ordeal broke up the family – Patricia and Robert divorced amid the repetitive trial process. Patricia and her oldest daughter moved back to Cleveland. Robert died in 2001.

“I’ve killed him a million times in my sleep,” the since-deceased father said of his little girl’s killer during one set of jury deliberations.