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The left continues to be deathly afraid of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The logic goes like this: they need Biden to win re-election. Which means Biden must run against Trump. Which means Trump must be the nominee. Which means any other competent Republican is a threat to Trump. Which means the left must attack all the other Republicans they think will run for president, declared or not.
You would think that the media would rejoice at a challenger to Donald Trump – after all, the Bad Orange Man was THE WORST EVER, right? Nope. They loved the ratings they got when they were trashing Trump, and having DeSantis as the Republican nominee would not be nearly as fun for them. He is disciplined in his dealings with the media, where Trump is most definitely not. So, what is the media to do? Obviously, they will trash DeSantis any chance they get.
This recent attempt, however, is a bit too much. Convicted murderer Donald Dillbeck, who was executed by lethal injection on Thursday, used his last words to take a shot at the governor – which was eagerly reported and repeated by media all over.
“… I speak for all the men, women and children, he’s put his foot on our necks. Ron DeSantis and other people like him can s—k our d—s.”
— Dan Sullivan (@TimesDan) February 23, 2023
Why was Dillbeck being executed?
Dillbeck’s criminal history includes him fatally shooting a Lee County deputy when he was just 15 years old, receiving a life sentence for that murder, escaping custody and killing again.”
The then-teenaged Dillbeck killed Lee County Deputy Dwight Lynn Hall, 31, in 1979, during a scuffle where Hall tackled Dillbeck, who grabbed the deputy’s gun and shot and killed him, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.”
The incident took place as Dillbeck was on the run for a carjacking offense.”
In 1990, while Dillbeck was serving a life sentence in Gadsden County for that murder, he escaped from authorities and fled to Tallahassee. Once in the city, he attempted to carjack a vehicle at a mall containing (Faye Lamb) Vann, whom he then stabbed to death.”
The children of Faye Lamb Vann were present for the execution, and had a comment on Governor DeSantis as well.
Family members of victim Faye Lamb Vann, who Dillbeck stabbed to death in 1990, were among those who witnessed the Dillbeck’s execution, and they looked on with stony expressions. They opted not to speak to reporters afterward, but prison system spokeswoman Michelle Glady distributed a written statement from two of Vann’s children.”
“11,932 days ago Donald Dillbeck brutally killed our mother,” Tony and Laura Vann wrote. “We were robbed of years of memories with her and it has been very painful ever since. However the execution has given us some closure.”
They added that they were grateful to DeSantis for carrying out the sentence.”
A victim’s family thanks Ron DeSantis? Meh, says the media. A convicted felon about to die spouts off about Ron DeSantis? STOP THE PRESSES. And one Huffington Post writer says that this is a “political” move by DeSantis, who still hasn’t declared that he’s running for president.
The timing of his execution appears to be part of a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to bring back death sentences by non-unanimous juries. DeSantis, who is expected to run for president, signed Dillbeck’s death warrant last month on the same day that he floated changing state law to allow non-unanimous juries to impose death sentences. “Maybe eight out of 12 have to agree or something,” DeSantis suggested at a Florida Sheriffs Association conference, just before ordering the execution of a man with that exact jury split.”
“I know I hurt people when I was young. I really messed up,” Dillbeck reportedly said just before his death. “But I know Ron DeSantis has done a lot worse. He’s taken a lot from a lot of people. I speak for all men, women and children. He’s put his foot on our necks. Ron DeSantis and other people like him can s—k our d—s.”
“I’m not minimizing what [Dillbeck] did to people,” Florida capital defender Allison Miller told the Tallahassee Democrat, “but he is most definitely a political pawn.”
DeSantis has cited the outcome of the trial for Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people in a 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, as a reason to bring back non-unanimous jury verdicts. Cruz was sentenced to life in prison without parole after jurors split 9-3 over the death penalty. Not all of the victims of the Parkland shooting wanted Cruz to be sentenced to death.”
Like most people sentenced to death, Dillbeck endured extreme abuse as a child. His birth mother drank 18-24 beers per day throughout her pregnancy, resulting in “a catastrophic effect on Mr. Dillbeck’s intellectual and adaptive functioning,” his lawyers wrote in a petition requesting that the Supreme Court review his case. “That Mr. Dillbeck suffers from Neurobehavioral Disorder associated with Prenatal Alcohol Exposure (ND-PAE) is thoroughly medically documented, unrebutted, and factually beyond dispute,” the lawyers continued.”
The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that executing people with intellectual disabilities violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. In his petition, Dillbeck’s lawyer argued that ND-PAE is “functionally similar” and “identical in both etiology and symptomatology” to intellectual disabilities and should exclude him from execution.”
You might have been able to make this argument over his first murder as a juvenile, but not of the brutal carjacking and stabbing of Vann AFTER his escape as an adult. The commentary by Dillbeck on DeSantis is nothing more than blame-shifting while excusing his own hideous crimes. And the media would like to portray THIS GUY as a victim?
"Sure I killed people, but he's Hitler"
Media runs with it.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 24, 2023
The fact that the media think quoting a full-on murderer to condemn DeSantis is a win shows how in their heads he is https://t.co/Ar5M7PHLKY
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 24, 2023
And the DeSantis camp is having none of it.
In response to the story, DeSantis rapid response director Christina Pushaw listed out the offenses committed by Dillbeck and shamed the outlet for appearing to call him the victim. She tweeted, “Perspective… this monster killed a police officer, went to jail, escaped, stabbed this mom to death in a parking lot at the Tallahassee Mall at random, and Huffington Post thinks HE is the victim.”
DeSantis deputy press secretary Jeremy Redfern commented on the outlet’s post, asking, “What is wrong with you?”
What is wrong with them is that any time they see a chance to attack DeSantis, the media comes running like a cat to catnip. The media wants Trump to run against Biden, and that means using whatever they find against DeSantis – even if it comes out of the mouth of a murderer facing execution.
Somehow, I don’t think the DeSantis camp is going to lose much sleep over him losing the convicted-murderer-on-Death-Row demographic, and the response by his team shows, once again, that there is a lot more discipline over there. Trump would not have been able to resist sending a tweet on TruthSocial if it had been him.
Featured image: Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, official portrait, public domain
Kevin says: So your post is disparaging “left leaning” sources for quoting what Dillbeck said in the last minutes of his life? It appears the conservative journals in Florida did the same thing. Executions are rare enough in the US anymore that typically, if a death row inmate says something minutes before they die, it gets reported.
Here’s the sad thing about your post … you give little credence or even the benefit of the doubt that when someone hears that a brutal convicted killer who had no regard for a human life speaks up in the last minutes of his life, that whatever he says is going to be garbage and that most people (left, middle, right) are going to see that as what it is … garbage. Instead, you use it as another wedge to further divide.
Of course there are going to be some imbeciles who try to use his statement as a political tool; there are imbeciles on both sides doing the same thing … that’s their purpose in life … to create wider chasms, further divide, make every issue black and white. Give people some credit and when they’re faced with believing what human filth says in their last breath, it’s just going to be that, filth. Period. Of course he is lashing out at DeSantis. DeSantis wouldn’t intervene in his death sentence. Dillbeck isn’t going to get the last word in … DeSantis will wake up tomorrow and Dillbeck won’t … DeSantis got the last word in.
The broader, more applicable issue is, do you support the death penalty or not? That’s where the discussion needs to happen; not the final words of a brutal killer.
George says: She did not attempt to divide anyone. She made a very persuasive argument that citizens should realize that leftist publications see DeSantis as the biggest electoral threat to Biden’s re-election and will attempt to smear DeSantis every chance they get. I found it be factual and persuasive. The lesson is do not trust anything you read in the Huffington Post to be objective.
Also, its her blog, she gets to choose the subjects of posts. But, since you bring it up, the most compelling argument for support of the death penalty is strengthened by multi/serial murders like Dillbeck. Society proved that it cannot protect anyone from being murdered by him, therefore society should exterminate him.
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