One of Florida’s longest-held death row prisoners will not be executed for now, amid reports that he has developed dementia—nearly five decades after his conviction in a brutal torture killing.
Gov. Ron DeSantis canceled William Thompson’s death warrant Thursday, only five days before the 74-year-old’s scheduled execution. The case was once described by Miami-Dade investigators as the county’s “meanest murder.”
DeSantis offered no explanation in a letter to Florida State Prison Warden Randall Polk, obtained by The Post. The governor had signed Thompson’s warrant on Sept. 11.
The decision came as court filings and legal reports raised concerns about Thompson’s worsening cognitive condition. He had spent more time on Miami-Dade’s death row than any other prisoner.
Thompson was initially sentenced to death in 1976. Although that punishment was later overturned and reinstated, he avoided execution twice during the 1980s and has remained on death row since 1989.
Under the Eighth Amendment, a death row prisoner cannot be executed if a mental illness prevents him from understanding that he is about to die or why the state is carrying out the punishment.
Thompson’s attorney, Brittney Lacy, asked Florida Department of Corrections officials to immediately take him to a hospital, saying he required “emergent medical care,” according to an emergency petition filed Sept. 16 and reviewed by The Post.
Lacy wrote that Thompson could not provide his lawyers with basic information about his hospitalizations and “appeared unaware” during their discussions.
The petition said Thompson also failed to understand questions from doctors about his previous surgeries, reportedly responding as though he did not grasp what he was being asked.
Florida neuropsychologist Robert Ouaou evaluated Thompson and concluded that he “meets the criteria for insanity due to his dementia and significant cognitive decline.”
According to the evaluation, Thompson “lacks the mental capacity to understand the fact of his impending execution and the reason for it.”
Lacy’s filing also said Thompson complained of severe pain and was too weak to move his arms or other limbs freely.
The prisoner had already undergone hospital stays in Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Gainesville, where doctors documented what they described as a “knowledge deficit.”
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The records said Thompson could not identify the current president and answered “Bush.” The documents do not clarify whether he meant George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush.
His attorneys said he could not remember what he had eaten, whether medical staff had examined him or whether he had spoken with anyone.
Thompson was sentenced to death after being convicted with accomplice Rocco Surace in the killing of Sally Ivester at the Sunny Isles Motel in Miami Beach. He was first placed on death row in 1976.
Ivester had been with another woman, Barbara Savage, when she encountered the two men—an interaction that ended with Thompson and Surace becoming her killers.
The pair demanded $200 from Ivester, but she was able to hand over only $25.
Enraged by the small amount, the men attacked her with chains and burned her with cigarettes during a violent assault.
Thompson and Surace then forced Ivester to call her mother and ask for additional money before assaulting her again.
The killing was so brutal that local cops described it as “Dade’s meanest murder,” according to the Miami Herald.
Ivester died from shock and the internal injuries she sustained.
Surace initially pleaded guilty to the kidnapping, rape and murder of Ivester – before the Supreme Court reversed his sentence. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 203 years in prison before he died in 1993 while in custody.
Thompson’s initial death row sentence was overturned – before he was spared from execution twice in 1982 and 1987.
He was sent back to death row in 1989, where he remained for more than 30 years – before the motion was withdrawn.
“Withdrawing the death warrant for William Thompson was the correct decision. Mr. Thompson is gravely ill, not competent, and intellectually disabled,” Grace Hanna, the executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said, welcoming DeSantis’ decision.
“His execution would have been an abject violation of the Eighth Amendment and an affront to human dignity.”
