Florida executes 74-year-old for wife’s murder, becoming oldest inmate put to death in state’s modern history

Florida executed 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer on Thursday evening for the murder of his wife more than three decades earlier, making him the oldest prisoner put to death in the state’s modern history and adding another execution to what has become one of the country’s most active capital punishment schedules. Spencer was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. on June 25 following a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. His execution closed the legal case against him, but it also reopened difficult questions about domestic violence, prolonged death-row imprisonment, the execution of elderly and seriously ill prisoners, and the increasingly frequent use of the death penalty in Florida.