16 July 2025 :
July 15, 2025 - Florida. Michael Bernard Bell, 54, Black, was executed.
Michael Bernard Bell was pronounced dead at 6:25 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection at the Florida State Prison.
Bell was sentenced to death on June 2, 1995 for a December 9, 1993 double murder. That night he gunned down 22-year-old Jimmy West and 18-year-old Tamecka Smith outside Moncrief Liquors in the car he thought was his brother's killer.
Prosecutors said Bell had publicly swore to avenge his brother, Lamar Bell, and plotted it for months. Theodore Wright had killed him that June in self-defense, according to court records.
In December, Bell spotted the yellow Plymouth that Wright was known to drive outside the lounge, so he called on two other friends and armed himself with an AK-47 for what he thought would be the vengeful assassination of his brother’s killer, and opened fire on the young couple who got into the car.
West and Smith had no affiliation with his brother’s death, as Wright had sold the car to West, his half-brother.
Bell also opened fire on a nearby crowd before fleeing. West died at the scene and Smith succumbed to her injuries en route to the hospital while a third passenger escaped unharmed.
He was arrested later that year with three extra murders tacked onto his record. On September 25, 1989, he shot and killed a woman, Lashawn Cowart, and her two-year-old son Travis. On August 19, 1989, he also killed Michael Johnson, his mother’s boyfriend, officials said.
“Thank you for not letting me spend the rest of my life in prison,” Bell said when a Department of Corrections official asked if he wanted to make a last statement.
Bell is Florida's eighth death row inmate executed this year, the 114th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1979, the 26th person executed in the US this year, and the 1,632nd overall since the nation resumed executions in 1977
https://eu.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2025/07/15/florida-executes-michael-bell-for-1993-slayings-in-jacksonville/85205497007/
https://nypost.com/2025/07/15/us-news/florida-man-put-to-death-for-double-murder-uses-his-last-words-to-thank-executioner/
