By 2025, America will have k!lled 26 de@th row prisoners, which is more than the year before.
In 2024, 25 people were given the de@th penalty in the US. According to the De@th Penalty Information Center, 35 prisoners on de@th row are set to be k!lled this year.
There are eight people who will be put to de@th in 2026.
Credit: AP
Michael Bernard Bell was the 26th person to be put to de@th this year. He d!ed yesterday (July 15, 2007) in the Florida State Prison, where he had been locked up for more than 20 years.
Bell was going to d!e for k!lling Jimmy West, 23, and Tamecka Smith, 18, in a Florida bar in 1993.
That night, Bell saw West driving a car that belonged to the person who k!lled his brother.
With this in mind, Bell was sure that West was implicated in the murder of his sister, so he asked two of his friends to help him open fire on the car.
Authorities have indicated that West and Smith, who were also shot and k!lled in the same event, were not involved in the de@th of Bell’s brother.
West d!ed at the spot, but Smith d!ed in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. There was another person in the car, but they somehow got away from the crash.
The New York Post says that Bell was also found guilty of k!lling three other people in addition to West Smith.
In 1989, Bell shot and k!lled a mother and her infant son. A month before West Smith’s murder, Bell also k!lled his mother’s boyfriend.
Bell d!ed at 6:25 p.m. local time on the day of his de@th, while he was serving a 20-year sentence.
Before the injection that k!lled her, Bell said, “Thank you for not giving me the chance to spend the rest of my life in jail.”
These were the last remarks of the 54-year-old.
Eight of the 2025 exec*tions were conducted in Florida, and a ninth one is set to take place in the next several months.
This is a big change from last year, when the state could only carry out the de@th penalty once.
Edward J. Zakrzewski II will be the next person to be put to de@th. He will be put to de@th on July 31.
Like Bell, Zakrzewski has been in prison since the late 1990s. He was convicted of k!lling his wife and his two children, who were 5 and 7 years old, in 1996.
Reports say that Zakrzewski’s wife was trying to divorce him, which led to his deadly attack on her.