Orlando Sentinel: ‘Ron DeSantis Is a Veteran. So Are 7 Inmates He’s Sending to Execution’

The obnoxiously liberal Orlando Sentinel, one of Florida’s largest newspapers, tried smear-by-association against Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis with an 1,800-word front-page hit job Friday. The headline was unbelievable in its tone of moral blackmail and disinformation:

Ron DeSantis is a veteran. So are 7 inmates he’s sending to execution.

It’s the brutal murders the inmates committed, some of the victims young children, that is sending them to execution, not the governor, no matter how much the Sentinel loathes him. This comes from the same left-wing paper that published an op-ed on the war in Gaza that mangled the truth about Hamas and their “alleged violence against civilians.”

The byline on this story came from Oishika Neogi of The War Horse, a liberal military news site, and was listed as a “Special to the Orlando Sentinel,” meaning the Sentinel bypassed their own journalists to plaster this hit on its front page — a story that doesn’t appear on the Sentinel’s website.

Downplayed or left out of the story – the awful details of why these convicted killers were being executed.

The caravan of executions started with a U.S. Army veteran in March.

It continued in May with a former Army Ranger who served in the Gulf War, then an Air Force veteran in July, a former National Guard member in August, and a Navy veteran in October.

On Thursday, a former Marine became the latest casualty, and next week, yet another Army veteran is scheduled to die in what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has called the “most veteran-friendly state in the nation.”

He’s the one who signed all seven of their death warrants. The governor wielding the executioner’s pen is a Navy veteran himself.

….

While veterans represent an estimated 12% of Florida’s 256 death row inmates, they account for nearly 40% of the 18 death warrants that the governor has signed this year.

DeSantis, a former JAG officer who served as a legal adviser to SEAL Team One in Iraq, has ignored the pleas of some veteran advocates and refused to address the disproportionate ratio of former service members he is sending to the Florida State Prison’s execution chamber.

The story was based on a report from the Death Penalty Information Center, which warned of a ​”battlefield-to-prison” pipeline.

Only briefly are the actual heinous crimes of these supposed victims of DeSantis aired out.

Victims’ advocates argue that Hutchinson’s horrific crimes speak for themselves: He was convicted for the murder of his girlfriend and her three children, after busting down the front door of their north Florida home on Sept. 11, 1998, and finding them in the master bedroom. He shot mom Renee Flaherty and her kids, seven-year-old Amanda and four-year-old Logan, all in the head. Then he turned the gun on nine-year-old Geoffrey.

Neogi wailed, “the governor has failed to address why so many of those inmates this year are veterans.”

Her contrary evidence was larded with unrelated political gripes.

In 1982, Bates was an active member of the National Guard when he was charged in the brutal murder of Janet Renee White. Prosecutors say he abducted White from her office, stole her diamond ring, attempted to rape her, and stabbed her to death.

The trial of Bates, who was Black, opened with a prayer from the victim’s minister, who asked for the judge and the all-white jury to have “wisdom.” With no mention of Bates’ military background, he was sentenced to death within an hour of deliberations.

But the Florida Supreme Court threw out his original death penalty and ordered the trial court to reconsider his sentence. This time, attorney Tom Dunn, a U.S. Army veteran, represented Bates with one aim: to persuade the jury that Bates was not the “worst of the worst,” and that life in prison, not death, was appropriate.

….

….Bates was among thousands of National Guard members sent into Miami after an all-white jury acquitted four white police officers in the beating of Arthur McDuffie, a Black Marine Corps veteran, left in a coma after a traffic stop in December 1979….

Gov. DeSantis took to X to respond to a related story filed by Axios Tampa Bay, which used the same report from the Death Penalty Information Center.

Why do legacy media outlets try so hard to make mass murders sympathetic? How about showing sympathy for the woman and three young children that this “veteran” brutally killed?