Florida executed a 58-year-old man on Tuesday for murdering a Panama City mother during a home invasion in February 1989, marking the state’s record 18th execution of a death row inmate this year.
Mark Geralds, 58, died by lethal injection Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison in Raiford, about 47 miles southwest of Jacksonville. The Florida Department of Corrections said he was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. EST.
Geralds waived his right to appeal after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued his death warrant last month, making him one of the few inmates to volunteer for execution.
His waiver followed years of litigation in which he accused prosecutors of misconduct, including ineffective assistance of counsel, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
A jury convicted Geralds and sentenced him to death in 1990, but the Florida Supreme Court later vacated that sentence. He was re-sentenced to death in 1993.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty argued that Geralds gave up his appeals even though his case raised numerous concerns — including suppressed evidence, untested forensics, the downplaying of his mental health history during the waiver hearing, and a poor attorney-client relationship.
“Mark lost the will to fight. After decades of challenging the validity of his conviction and sentence, uncovering evidence that the state had hidden and withheld from his jury and without further DNA analysis, Mark waived his remaining appeals and asked to die,” the FADP said after his execution.
“The state of Florida treated Mark’s volunteer status as a gift. His waiver became a shortcut. An opportunity to add another tally to this administration’s death count without confronting the serious constitutional defects in his case. They capitalized on his despair.”
Geralds was convicted of killing 33-year-old Tressa Lynn Pettibone on Feb. 1, 1989.
Court documents say Geralds worked as a carpenter and had remodeled the Pettibone home. A week before the murder, he ran into Pettibone and her children at a mall, and she mentioned that her husband was out of town. He later spoke to 8-year-old Bart Pettibone at an arcade and asked when his father would return and when he and his sister attended school.
On Feb. 1, Bart came home from school and found his mother dead on the kitchen floor. According to court records, she had been stabbed twice in the neck and fatally stabbed in her left side. A knife was found in the sink. The medical examiner reported she had also suffered blunt force trauma and that her wrists were bound with plastic ties for at least 20 minutes.
The jury heard testimony that several items were stolen, including jewelry, a pair of red Bucci sunglasses, and Pettibone’s Mercedes. Police later found the car in a nearby school parking lot.
Circumstantial evidence tying Geralds to the killing included a blood-stained gold herringbone necklace he pawned on the day of the murder, a witness who said Geralds had given someone red Bucci glasses like those stolen, and a plastic tie found in his car.
Geralds became Florida’s 18th execution this year, surpassing the state’s previous record of eight in 2014.
The United States has carried out 44 executions so far this year, with at least three more scheduled. Frank Athen Walls is set to be executed in Florida on Dec. 18.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, at least 165 death row inmates — about 10% of all executions — have been execution volunteers, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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