The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops has formally appealed to Gov. Ron DeSantis to halt the execution of Dusty Ray Spencer, a 74-year-old man convicted of killing his wife more than three decades ago. In a letter dated June 18, the bishops asked DeSantis to commute Spencer’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole, citing both Catholic teaching on human life and the particular circumstances of the condemned man’s history.

Spencer was convicted in the 1992 stabbing death of his wife, Karen, in the backyard of her Orange County home. The killing was carried out with a brick and a knife; Karen’s 17-year-old son witnessed the attack and attempted to intervene. Prosecutors noted that Spencer had made threats against Karen’s life before being released on bail, the very release that preceded the killing. Defense attorneys, for their part, argued the crime was a crime of passion.

A Longstanding Tradition of Advocacy

The Florida bishops regularly appeal to state authorities when executions are scheduled, and their June 18 letter — written by Michael Sheedy, executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops — follows that pattern. The letter did not minimize the gravity of Spencer’s crime or the suffering of Karen’s family, but it asked that Spencer’s life be spared in recognition of his background, including severe childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his father and a diagnosed paranoid personality disorder.

“Nevertheless, we ask that you spare the life of Mr. Spencer, who was sexually abused as a child by his father and had a paranoid personality disorder,” the bishops wrote.

The letter also articulated the theological foundation underlying the bishops’ opposition to capital punishment. “It is rather to recognize with awe that God is the author of life, and to reserve to him the taking of human life except where it is otherwise impossible to maintain the common good,” the bishops stated.

Catholic Teaching on Capital Punishment

The bishops’ appeal reflects the position that the Catholic Church has increasingly emphasized in recent decades. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, as revised under Pope Francis and affirmed by Pope Leo XIV, holds that capital punishment is inadmissible because it violates the dignity of the human person and that the Church works with determination for its abolition worldwide. The revision does not deny that states have historically held authority over life and death, but insists that modern societies possess sufficient means of protecting the public without recourse to execution — making the death penalty, in the Church’s current judgment, unnecessary and therefore impermissible.

This is precisely the argument the Florida bishops applied to Spencer’s case: not that the crime was less than what courts found it to be, but that the state’s legitimate interest in public safety can be fully secured through a sentence of life without parole.

Spencer, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, would be 74 years old at the time of his scheduled execution at Florida State Prison in Raiford, a facility located between Jacksonville and Gainesville. If carried out, he would rank among the ten oldest individuals executed in the United States since 1976, according to available data.

Recent Executions in Florida

Florida carried out another execution just weeks before Spencer’s scheduled date. Andrew Lukehart, 53, was put to death on June 2 for the 1997 killing of his girlfriend’s infant child. The Florida bishops similarly appealed in that case. Florida has maintained an active execution schedule under Governor DeSantis, who signed Spencer’s death warrant on May 26.

The execution was scheduled for 6 p.m. on June 25 at Florida State Prison. As of the bishops’ letter, there had been no public indication from the governor’s office of a response to their appeal.

The case raises questions that Catholic social teaching has long engaged: the dignity owed to every human person regardless of crime, the limits of state power over life, and the moral weight of a person’s formative suffering — without absolving that person of responsibility — when the community weighs what justice demands. Those questions, the Florida bishops suggest, point away from the finality of execution and toward a punishment that protects without taking life.

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