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A killer who had begged the Governor to sign his death warrant was executed in the electric chair at daybreak today.

The killer, Michael Alan Durocher, 33, went to his death after the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected two appeals that had been filed over his objections. He had been convicted of killing five people and was executed for three of the deaths.

Mr. Durocher became the 32d man to be executed in Florida since the state resumed capital punishment in 1979.

Opponents of the death penalty denounced the speed with which Mr. Durocher, who was sentenced in 1991, was executed. "The reaction has been, 'If he wants to die, let him go ahead and do that,' " said Susan Cary, a lawyer who has represented death row inmates. "We wouldn't do that if he was holding a gun in his hand."

Mr. Durocher was executed for the 1983 murders of his 6-month-old son, Joshua; his girlfriend, Grace Reed, and her 5-year-old daughter, Candice. The bodies were not discovered until 1990. He was also under a death sentence for shooting a man to death in a 1986 robbery and was serving a life sentence for bludgeoning a roommate to death two years later.

Mr. Durocher wrote Gov. Lawton Chiles that he was a "believer in capital punishment, and I respectfully request that justice now be served."

In one of his letters to the Governor, Mr. Durocher said Ms. Reed had lied about Joshua being their child and that "that made her a nuisance, one that needed to be eliminated." He shot her and the 5-year-old in the back and stabbed the baby.

When Mr. Chiles signed the death warrant in May, Mr. Durocher wrote the Governor a thank-you note.

Florida's Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that Mr. Durocher could waive all appeals, and it held that a state agency that represents death row inmates had no right to represent him. Nevertheless, the agency's lawyers filed late-hour appeals, claiming the United States Supreme Court had never ruled on what steps the states must take to protect condemned killers who want to waive their appeals.

Florida executes man convicted in five murders

Seattle Times News

Wednesday, August 25, 1993

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A man convicted of murdering five people, including his girlfriend and two children, was executed early today in Florida's electric chair after he opposed efforts to appeal his death sentence.

Michael Alan Durocher, 33, was put to death at Florida State Prison near Starke and did not make a last statement before his execution, a spokeswoman for Gov. Lawton Chiles said.

Durocher repeatedly fought efforts to appeal his execution and wrote a thank-you note to Chiles when the governor signed his death warrant in May.

At a court hearing this month, Durocher said, "I am competent. I have thought about this for five years now."

Durocher was the 32nd inmate executed by Florida since it resumed the death penalty in 1979 and the first to be killed on his first scheduled execution date.

He was executed for the the 1983 murders of Grace Reed, their 6-month-old son and her 5-year-old daughter after he killed them and backed out of a murder-suicide pact. Durocher also faced a death sentence for a robbery-murder in Jacksonville in 1986 and a life sentence for beating his Jacksonville roommate to death in 1988.