Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made a dramatic last-minute decision to halt the execution of a 74-year-old convicted murderer who has spent nearly half a century on death row, following alarming reports that the elderly inmate suffers from dementia and a long list of serious medical conditions.
William Lee Thompson was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday, October 13, for the 1976 murder of 23-year-old Sally Ivester in Miami-Dade County. However, on Thursday, October 8, DeSantis unexpectedly withdrew the death warrant, stopping the execution just five days before it was set to take place.
The Republican governor offered no public explanation for his decision, which marks the first time he has withdrawn a death warrant during his administration. The sudden reversal came amid mounting questions about whether Thompson, whose attorneys say he is severely cognitively impaired, could legally understand why the state intended to execute him.
Making the timing particularly striking, the Florida Supreme Court had rejected Thompson’s latest request for a stay of execution just hours before DeSantis intervened.
The governor originally signed Thompson’s death warrant on September 11, setting the stage for an execution that would have come more than 50 years after the crime. Yet serious concerns about the prisoner’s health quickly complicated the state’s plans.
Thompson’s attorneys reported that his mental and physical condition had deteriorated significantly. According to his legal team and death penalty advocates, he suffers from dementia, heart failure, chronic kidney disease, severe liver disease, and numerous other medical problems that have left him dependent on others for basic daily activities.
His reported condition is so severe that he requires assistance with bathing, using the bathroom, and moving between his bed and wheelchair. Advocates have also described complications involving blood clots in his lungs, pneumonia, malnutrition, broken ribs, and a serious pressure wound.
Perhaps even more troubling were reports about his inability to understand his surroundings or recognize what was happening to him.
Grace Hanna, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said Thompson had displayed profound confusion during recent evaluations, including an apparent inability to identify the current president.
“He did not know where he was, stated that ‘Bush’ was the president, and, at times, did not even recognize that he had been sentenced to death,” Hanna said.
Those concerns prompted DeSantis to appoint a three-member panel of psychiatrists in September to evaluate whether Thompson was mentally competent to be executed.
According to an executive order issued by the governor, Thompson’s attorneys had informed state officials that a neuropsychologist examined him on September 15 and concluded that his dementia and significant cognitive decline prevented him from understanding his impending execution or the reason for it.
The psychiatric panel was directed to examine Thompson on October 1 and submit its findings the following day. However, those findings have not been publicly released, leaving unanswered questions about what officials ultimately determined.
The controversy surrounding Thompson’s execution has also renewed attention on the horrific crime that originally sent him to death row.
On March 30, 1976, Thompson and another man, Rocco Surace, were staying in a Miami-Dade County motel room with Ivester and another woman, Barbara Savage.
According to court records, Thompson and Surace instructed the women to contact their families for money. When Ivester was unable to obtain the amount they demanded, she was subjected to a prolonged and violent assault.
The 23-year-old was beaten and tortured before ultimately dying from internal bleeding and multiple injuries.
Thompson was arrested shortly afterward and initially sentenced to death in 1976 after pleading guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery.
His case subsequently became the subject of decades of appeals and legal challenges. After earlier sentences were overturned, a jury voted 7-5 in favor of the death penalty during a 1989 resentencing proceeding, and the judge again imposed a death sentence.
Surace also originally received a death sentence, but his case took a different legal path. Following an appeal and retrial, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He died behind bars in 1993.
Although Thompson’s conviction and death sentence survived subsequent challenges, his declining condition has raised a different legal question: whether a prisoner who no longer understands the punishment awaiting him can constitutionally be put to death.
Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, states cannot execute prisoners who lack the mental capacity to understand the reason for their execution. A dementia diagnosis alone does not automatically make someone ineligible for execution, but severe cognitive impairment can create constitutional barriers when it prevents that understanding.
Thompson’s attorneys have also pursued legal action over his medical treatment, alleging that prison officials failed to provide adequate care as his condition worsened. A federal lawsuit filed in September sought appropriate medical treatment for the inmate, separate from efforts to challenge his scheduled execution.
The withdrawal of his death warrant does not overturn Thompson’s murder conviction or erase his death sentence. He remains a condemned prisoner, and the possibility of another execution warrant has not been permanently eliminated.
For now, however, his legal team is focused on getting him medical attention.
“Mr. Thompson suffers from dementia and his health is failing — both of which were gravely concerning with an impending execution,” attorney Bri Lacy said following the governor’s decision.
Lacy expressed hope that the Florida Department of Corrections would transfer Thompson to a medical facility capable of meeting his increasingly serious needs.
The extraordinary development comes as Florida continues to carry out executions at a rapid pace. The state executed 19 prisoners in 2025, its highest annual total since capital punishment resumed in the 1970s.
Thompson had been scheduled to be the second Florida inmate executed on October 13. Another prisoner, 63-year-old James Robertson, remains scheduled for execution that day for the 2008 murder of his cellmate, Frank Hart, at Charlotte Correctional Institution.
For the family of Sally Ivester, the case represents a murder that has remained in the court system for half a century. For Thompson’s attorneys and death penalty opponents, it raises questions about how the state should handle prisoners whose health has deteriorated during decades of incarceration.
DeSantis has not indicated whether Thompson’s execution will be rescheduled, and the reason behind his sudden reversal remains publicly unknown.
For the moment, a man who had been just days away from lethal injection will remain on death row, as questions persist about his medical care and whether he could ever be considered competent for execution.
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