STARKE, Fla. — A Florida man who killed an 8-year-old girl and her grandmother on a night in which he drank heavily and used drugs is set to be executed Thursday.

Edward James, 63, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison outside Starke under a death warrant signed in February by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Barring a last-minute reprieve, the execution is to be the second this year in Florida, which is planning a third in April.

Three other executions were scheduled this week around the United States: Louisiana put a man to death Tuesday using nitrogen gas for the first time as it resumed executions after a 15-year hiatus. Arizona on Wednesday lethally injected a man who had kidnapped and murdered his girlfriend’s ex-husband. Another lethal injection is planned Thursday in Oklahoma.

James drew the death penalty for the Sept. 19, 1993, killings of 8-year-old Toni Neuner and Betty Dick, 58, the child’s grandmother. James had been renting a room in Dick’s house in Casselberry. where Toni Neuner and three other children were also staying that night.

Court records show James drank up to 24 beers at a party, downed some gin and also took LSD before returning to his room at Dick’s house. The girl was raped and strangled to death. The other children were not harmed.

James, who pleaded guilty to the charges, was also found guilty of the rape and of stealing Dick’s jewelry and car after stabbing her 21 times. Court documents show James drove the car across the country, occasionally selling pieces of jewelry until he was arrested on Oct. 6 of that year in Bakersfield, California.

Police obtained a videotaped confession from James, who despite his guilty pleas was sentenced to death upon an 11-1 recommendation by a jury.

James’ lawyers filed several appeals with state and federal courts, all of which were denied. Most recently, the Florida Supreme Court rejected an argument that James’ longtime use of drugs and alcohol, several head injuries and a heart attack in 2023 led to mental decline that would make his execution cruel and unusual punishment.

The justices, however, agreed with a lower court decision that “James’s cognitive issues do not shield him from execution.” The court also rejected an argument from James’ lawyers that the heart attack he suffered in prison led to deprivation of oxygen that affected his brain and should be considered new evidence to halt the execution.

Even if it is new evidence, the court determined, the “defendant cannot establish that such evidence would likely yield a less severe sentence at a new penalty phase.”

The nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center said Florida uses a three-drug cocktail for its lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart.

Earlier this year, James Ford was executed for the 1997 killings of a couple in Charlotte County — witnessed by their toddler daughter, who survived. DeSantis also signed a death warrant for the April 8 execution of Michael Tanzi for the 2000 slaying of a woman in the Florida Keys.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A man convicted of kidnapping a woman in Miami and later strangling her to death is set to be executed next month under a death warrant Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Monday.

Michael Tanzi, 48, is scheduled to be executed April 8 at Florida State Prison.

Janet Acosta was seated inside her parked van in April 2000 when Tanzi attacked her and threatened her with a razor blade, according to court documents. Tanzi bound and gagged the woman and began heading toward the Florida Keys in her van. Tanzi sexually assaulted Acosta at one point and used her bank card to take money from ATMs.

Tanzi eventually drove to an isolated area of Cudjoe Key, where he strangled Acosta and left her body, officials said. He then drove to Key West to visit friends. As Tanzi was making his way through the Keys, Acosta’s friends reported her missing. Police recognized the woman’s van and arrested Tanzi.

Tanzi’s execution would be the state’s third so far this year. James Dennis Ford was put to death in February for murdering a couple in 1997 in Charlotte County. Edward James is scheduled to be executed March 20 for murdering a woman and raping and killing her 8-year-old-granddaughter in Seminole County in 1993.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) —

A South Carolina man convicted of murder was executed by firing squad Friday, the first U.S. prisoner to die by that method in 15 years.

Three volunteer prison employees used rifles to carry out the execution of Brad Sigmon, 67, who was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m.

Sigmon killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat in their Greenville County home in 2001 in a botched plot to kidnap their daughter. He told police he planned to take her for a romantic weekend, then kill her and himself.

Sigmon’s lawyers said he chose the firing squad because the electric chair would “cook him alive,” and he feared that a lethal injection of pentobarbital into his veins would send a rush of fluid and blood into his lungs and drown him.

The details of South Carolina’s lethal injection method are kept secret in South Carolina, and Sigmon unsuccessfully asked the state Supreme Court on Thursday to pause his execution because of that.

On Friday, Sigmon wore a black jumpsuit with a hood over his head and a white target with a red bullseye over his chest.

The armed prison employees stood 15 feet (4.6 meters) from where he sat in the state’s death chamber — the same distance as the backboard is from the free-throw line on a basketball court. Visible in the same small room was the state’s unused electric chair. The gurney used to carry out lethal injections had been rolled away.

The volunteers all fired at the same time through openings in a wall. They were not visible to about a dozen witnesses in a room separated from the chamber by bullet-resistant glass. Sigmon made several heavy breaths during the two minutes that elapsed from when the hood was placed to the shots being fired.

His arms briefly tensed when he was shot, and the target was blasted off his chest. He appeared to give another breath or two with a red stain on his chest, and small amounts of tissue could be seen from the wound during those breaths.

A doctor came out about a minute later and examined Sigmon for 90 seconds before declaring him dead.

The firing squad is an execution method with a long and violent history in the U.S. and around the world. Death in a hail of bullets has been used to punish mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America’s Old West and as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

Since 1977 only three other prisoners in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad. All were in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010. Another Utah man, Ralph Menzies, could be next; he is awaiting the result of a hearing in which his lawyers argued that his dementia makes him unfit for execution.

In South Carolina on Friday, a group of protesters holding signs with messages such as “All life is precious” and “Execute justice not people” gathered outside the prison before Sigmon’s execution.

Supporters and lawyers for Sigmon asked Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison. They said he was a model prisoner trusted by guards and worked every day to atone for the killings and also that he committed the killings after succumbing to severe mental illness.

But McMaster denied the clemency plea. No governor has ever commuted a death sentence in the state, where 46 other prisoners have been executed since the death penalty resumed in the U.S. in 1976. Seven have died in the electric chair and 39 others by lethal injection.

In the early 2000s, South Carolina was among the busiest death penalty states, carrying out an average of three executions a year. But officials suspended executions for 13 years, in part because they were unable to obtain lethal injection drugs.

The state Supreme Court cleared the way to resume them in July. Freddie Owens was the first to be put to death, on Sept. 20, after McMaster denied him clemency. Richard Moore was executed on Nov. 1 and Marion Bowman Jr. on Jan. 31.

Going forward the court will allow an execution every five weeks.

South Carolina now has 28 inmates on its death row including two who have exhausted their appeals and are awaiting execution, most likely this spring. Just one man has been added to death row in the past decade.

Before executions were paused, more than 60 people faced death sentences. Many of those have either had their sentences reduced to life or died in prison.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The state of Alabama urged a federal judge Tuesday to allow the nation’s fourth execution with nitrogen gas to proceed next week, but a doctor who witnessed an earlier execution by the new method told the judge the inmate appeared to be in distress and awake minutes longer than officials predicted.

Alabama has carried out all three of the nation’s executions using the gas and has set a Feb. 6 execution date for Demetrius Terrence Frazier, 52. But attorneys for Frazier, who was convicted of the 1991 rape and murder of a woman in Birmingham, sought the hearing asking the court to intervene.

Frazier’s attorneys urged the judge to block the execution unless the state makes changes to its protocol, such as giving the inmate the same sedative used at the start of lethal injections before the gas begins flowing. Separately Tuesday, Frazier’s mother and death penalty opponents asked Michigan’s governor to bring Frazier back there to finish a life sentence in the state for a separate murder conviction in the killing of a 14-year-old girl. Michigan has no death penalty.

Alabama’s method involves placing a respirator gas mask over the face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen. The state maintained Tuesday that the method brings swift death.

Dylan L. Mauldin, assistant solicitor general for Alabama, called Frazier’s legal maneuver a tactic to delay his execution and said the court should deny his request for a preliminary injunction. Mauldin noted the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled the method unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for Frazier, argued that inmates executed with the gas appeared to be conscious for some minutes, instead of the 30 to 40 seconds he said the state predicted.

U.S. District Judge Emily Marks questioned Frazier’s attorney about why she should intervene when the courts have previously let nitrogen executions go forward.

“Something is going wrong. Every inmate who has been executed by nitrogen gas has exhibited signs of consciousness beyond the 40 seconds,” Spencer Hahn, an attorney for Frazier, responded.

Dr. Brian McAlary, an anesthesiologist who witnessed the November execution of Carey Dale Grayson, testified that he observed clear “evidence of distress” in the prisoner. He noted Grayson moved his head back and forth, had rapid eye movements and struggled against his restraints.

McAlary said he believed Grayson’s last voluntary movement occurred after about three minutes when he simultaneously raised both legs and held them in the air before letting them fall down. McAlary said he believed the movement was voluntary because “both legs were moved at exactly the same time, direction and distance.”

The testimony was the first time a medical doctor had testified about observations during a nitrogen execution. The court was previously given news accounts from journalists and the observations of prison staff.

Dr. Joseph Antognini, an anesthesiologist hired by the state as an expert witness, gave competing testimony that such movements did not necessarily indicate Grayson was conscious. Antognini did not witness Grayson’s execution.

“Movement can happen in the absence of pain,” Antognini said. He gave examples of instances when he saw patients move involuntarily during surgery while unconscious. But he acknowledged he had never seen movements like a double leg lift during surgery.

Frazier was in the courtroom throughout, shackled and taking notes in handcuffs on a legal pad.

Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm testified that Grayson was combative at the start of his execution, cursing the warden and raising his middle fingers as he was strapped to the gurney. Hamm testified that he thought Grayson’s head movements were an effort to knock the mask loose.

Frazier’s supporters had also argued he should be in a Michigan prison instead of Alabama’s death row.

Frazier was first convicted in Michigan and sentenced to life in prison for the 1992 murder of a 14-year-old girl. Prosecutors said Frazier while in police custody in Michigan, confessed to raping and shooting Brown in Alabama after stealing about $80 from her purse. He was convicted in Alabama and given the death penalty. The then governors of Alabama and Michigan agreed in 2011 to place him on Alabama’s death row.

Frazier’s attorneys had filed a separate appeal to have him sent to Michigan to finish his life sentence there but dropped the request after Michigan’s attorney general wrote in a court filing that Michigan doesn’t seek his return.

Death penalty opponents and Frazier’s mother made a last-minute plea to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to intervene and request that Frazier be sent back to Michigan.

“Please bring my son back to Michigan. Please don’t let Alabama kill my son if you can stop it,” Carol Frazier wrote in the letter to Whitmer.

Whitmer’s office declined to comment.

——

Associated Press reporter Joey Cappelletti contributed from Lansing, Michigan

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row partly to stop Trump from pushing forward their executions.

Trump criticized Biden’s decision on Monday to change the sentences of 37 of the 40 condemned people to life in prison without parole, arguing that it was senseless and insulted the families of their victims. Biden said converting their punishments to life imprisonment was consistent with the moratorium imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.

“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” he wrote on his social media site. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”

Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations. The president-elect wrote that he would direct the department to pursue the death penalty “as soon as I am inaugurated,” but was vague on what specific actions he may take and said they would be in cases of “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”

He highlighted the cases of two men who were on federal death row for slaying a woman and a girl, had admitted to killing more and had their sentences commuted by Biden.

On the campaign trail, Trump often called for expanding the federal death penalty — including for those who kill police officers, those convicted of drug and human trafficking, and migrants who kill U.S. citizens.

“Trump has been fairly consistent in wanting to sort of say that he thinks the death penalty is an important tool and he wants to use it,” said Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing at Ohio State University’s law school. “But whether practically any of that can happen, either under existing law or other laws, is a heavy lift.”

Berman said Trump’s statement at this point seems to be just a response to Biden’s commutation.

“I’m inclined to think it’s still in sort of more the rhetoric phase. Just, ‘don’t worry. The new sheriff is coming. I like the death penalty,’” he said.

Most Americans have historically supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to decades of annual polling by Gallup, but support has declined over the past few decades. About half of Americans were in favor in an October poll, while roughly 7 in 10 Americans backed capital punishment for murderers in 2007.

Before Biden’s commutation, there were 40 federal death row inmates compared with more than 2,000 who have been sentenced to death by states.

“The reality is all of these crimes are typically handled by the states,” Berman said.

A question is whether the Trump administration would try to take over some state murder cases, such as those related to drug trafficking or smuggling. He could also attempt to take cases from states that have abolished the death penalty.

Berman said Trump’s statement, along with some recent actions by states, may present an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider a precedent that considers the death penalty disproportionate punishment for rape.

“That would literally take decades to unfold. It’s not something that is going to happen overnight,” Berman said.

Before one of Trump’s rallies on Aug. 20, his prepared remarks released to the media said he would announce he would ask for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers. But Trump never delivered the line.

One of the men Trump highlighted on Tuesday was ex-Marine Jorge Avila Torrez, who was sentenced to death for killing a sailor in Virginia and later pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbing of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old girl in a suburban Chicago park several years before.

The other man, Thomas Steven Sanders, was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and slaying of a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana, days after shooting the girl’s mother in a wildlife park in Arizona. Court records show he admitted to both killings.

Some families of victims expressed anger with Biden’s decision, but the president had faced pressure from advocacy groups urging him to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The ACLU and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were some of the groups that applauded the decision.

Biden left three federal inmates to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history. _______

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle L. Price and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.