A death row inmate convicted of raping and killing an 8-year-old girl in 1993 and then killing her grandmother while under the influence of alcohol was put to death by the State of Florida on Thursday.
In a subsequent press conference, Florida Department of Corrections deputy communications officer Paul Walker announced that Edward James, 63, had been declared deceased at 8:15 p.m. EST.
“The execution tonight took place without incident,” he stated.
Although Florida uses lethal injection for executions, the manner of execution was not specified, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.
He was found guilty of killing her grandma, Betty Dick, 58, on the evening of September 19, 1993, and raping and killing 8-year-old Toni Neuner.
In April 1995, James entered a guilty plea to two murder charges along with numerous additional offences. In August of the same year, he was given the death penalty. His punishment will be executed after the Supreme Court dismissed his last appeals early on Thursday.
A few opponents of the death penalty demonstrated outside the Florida State Prison at Raiford, 45 miles west of Jacksonville.
One of Neuner’s older brothers, Jere Pearson Jr., spoke to the news conference and urged those who opposed James’ execution to refrain from passing judgement on his family.
“Our lives were extremely altered by the choices he made that day,” he stated. “We lost generations because of his actions.”
Court records state that James was under the influence of narcotics and alcohol on the night he carried out the killings.
He was renting a room at Dick’s home and was a family friend of his victims. He had eaten more than 24 cans of beer, some gin, and roughly ten hits of LSD on the night of the crime while attending a party a few houses down the street.
According to court filings, Dick’s four grandkids, including Neuner, were asleep in the living room when he got home.
James went back to the living room after having a sandwich in the kitchen, where he seized Neuner and choked him. According to the court filings, James raped the girl, thought she was dead, and then threw her body behind his bed.
Then, while Dick was sleeping, he went to her bedroom and struck her over the head with a pewter candlestick.
One of her grandchildren entered the room as he was stabbing her, and he tied her up and confined her in a bathroom.
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After the crime, he had a shower, took Dick’s jewellery and purse, and then drove across the nation, stopping sometimes to sell the items he had taken.
On October 6, 1993, he was taken into custody in Bakersfield, California.
Pearson asked people to pray for James’ family and their grandmother, sister, and niece, saying, “Tonight was the night Eddie James paid for the crimes he committed 31 years ago.”
James’ execution was the tenth this year and the fourth this week in the United States. Wendell Grissom was put to death in Oklahoma earlier Thursday.
Additionally, it was Florida’s second execution of 2025. James Ford, 64, was executed by the State of Florida on February 14 for the 1997 murder of a couple in front of their daughter, age 22.
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