Florida is preparing to carry out the execution of a man convicted in a brutal double homicide tied to a failed revenge plot from 1993.
Michael Bernard Bell, 54, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison in Starke, unless a last-minute appeal halts the process.
Bell was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murders of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith.
Both Smith and West were gunned down outside a liquor lounge in Jacksonville.
Prosecutors say Bell mistook West for the man who had killed his brother earlier that year.
The actual killer had already sold the car Bell was targeting, but that didn’t stop Bell from taking deadly action.
According to court records, Bell called two friends, grabbed an AK-47, and waited outside the lounge for the car’s owner.
When West, Smith, and another woman exited the building, Bell opened fire.
West died instantly. Smith died en route to the hospital.
The third woman was unharmed, though witnesses said Bell also fired at a group of bystanders before fleeing the scene.
Bell was arrested the following year.
However, what came next revealed a disturbing pattern of violence.
Authorities later linked Bell to three additional murders.
In 1989, he fatally shot a woman and her toddler.
Months before the 1993 shooting, he also murdered his mother’s boyfriend, investigators said.
Despite these convictions, Bell’s attorneys have attempted a last-ditch legal maneuver to stop the execution, citing new evidence regarding witness testimony.
But the Florida Supreme Court unanimously rejected the appeal, pointing to “overwhelming evidence of Bell’s guilt.”
A similar appeal was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court late last week, though no ruling had been issued as of Tuesday morning.
If the execution proceeds, Bell will become the eighth person executed in Florida this year.
It makes the Sunshine State the leader in executions nationwide.
A ninth execution is already scheduled for later this month.
In contrast, the state carried out six executions in 2023 and just one the year before.
Nationwide, 25 men have been executed in 2025 so far, matching the total for all of 2024.
Florida currently leads the nation, with Texas and South Carolina tied for second with four executions each.
Alabama follows with three, while Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee have each carried out one execution this year.
Governor Ron DeSantis has consistently defended Florida’s tough-on-crime approach, prioritizing swift and certain justice for the most heinous criminals.
Bell’s case, prosecutors argue, is precisely the kind of brutality that capital punishment was designed to address.
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