Slawson Found Sane, Executed in Florida for Murdering Tampa Family

By Robert Anthony Phillips - TheDeathHouse.com

May 16, 2003

STARKE, Fla. - Newton Slawson, mad or sane, has had his death wish fullfilled. He was executed Friday morning. Slawson, who murdered a family of four in Tampa in 1989 and later fired his lawyers, waived his appeals and said he wanted to be executed, was put to death by lethal injection just after 7 a.m. at Florida State Prison.

Slawson gave no last statement before the lethal injection began at 7:01 a.m. He was pronounced dead at 7:10 a.m., said Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections.

The execution came after Gov. Jeb Bush temporarily stayed Slawson's original Thursday execution time in order to have a team of three psychiatrists examine Slawson to determine whether he was competent.

The psychiatrists met with Slawson at 10 p.m. Thursday night and later reported to Bush that Slawson was competent and knew he was going to be executed for the murders. When advised of the stay given to him by Bush shortly before his scheduled 6 p.m. Thursday execution, Slawson became upset, according to Ivey. "He was visibly upset by the news there was a stay," Ivey had said Thursday night. "He wants his sentence carried out."

After meeting with the psychiatrists, Slawson went to sleep and awoke about an hour before his execution, Ivey said. Slawson did not have any breakfast, Ivey stated. Six relatives of the family Slawson murdered witnessed the execution.

Slawson, who defense lawyers and anti-death penalty groups contended was mentally ill, murdered the family after he had gone to their home to buy crack cocaine. He also cut the unborn fetus from the body of the woman he killed. Bush had ordered the temporary stay Thursday after former lawyers for Slawson wrote a letter saying Slawson was mentally ill.

Victim Crawled To Revealed Killer

The victims were Gerald and Peggy Wood and their children, Jennifer, 4, and Glendon, 3. All were found shot to death in April 1989 in their Tampa home. Before dying, the mortally wounded Peggy Wood managed to crawl out of her apartment and tell a neighbor that Slawson had killed her husband and children.

After shooting Peggy Wood, prosecutors said Slawson, 48, used a knife to slice open her stomach and remove the eight-month-old male fetus. Slawson said he did this in an attempt to "save" the child. However, an autopsy revealed that the fetus had been shot twice. Slawson was convicted of manslaughter for killing the unborn child.

Wanted To Die

At his trial, Slawson waived presentation of mitigating evidence to the jury that would recommend whether he lived or be sentenced to death.

In 1998, he won the right to drop his appeals and dismiss his court-appointed lawyers. Slawson had been found competent to make that decision by the courts. Florida Supreme Court documents state that Slawson had gone to the Wood home carrying a knife and a .357 revolver. He was apparently going to buy rock cocaine.

He later told police that he had placed the gun in the bathroom to keep it away from the children and gave the knife to Gerald Wood to cut the cocaine. When he refused to buy cocaine from Gerald Wood, Slawson claimed that Peggy Wood said he might be the police. Slawson said he went to the bathroom to pick up his gun and was going to leave.

When he returned, Gerald Wood had a knife in his hand. It was then that Slawson claimed he shot Gerald Wood and "may have shot" Peggy Wood. Slawson then killed the children and later cut the fetus out of Peggy Wood’s body.

Incision Marks On Photos

Slawson also claimed that Wood might have put drugs in his beer. Other evidence linking Slawson to the murders was the fact that the murder weapon was found in his car, along with a magazine containing a picture of a nude woman with incision marks drawn on her body. Slawson would later say that he had been drawing pictures of mutilated bodies since he was 11 and that he had constant thoughts of disemboweling women.

Appeals lawyers who had represented Slawson said he was mentally ill and wouldn’t cooperate with him, refusing to leave his prison cell for legal visits, medical or psychological evaluations, according to court documents.

The defense lawyers described Slawson as being so paranoid and delusional that "he is incapable of trusting his attorneys, family members or anyone else who may be considered a natural ally." The lawyers say that as a child, Slawson suffered numerous, severe head injuries, was oxygen deprived at birth and had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. He also had suffered seizures throughout his life, they said.

Slawson was the second condemned killer executed in Florida in 2003 and the 56th since the state resumed executions in 1979.

Fight to Death Penalty in the USA

Newton Carlton Slawson, 48, 2003-05-16, Florida

Newton Carlton Slawson, convicted of killing 4 members of a Tampa family and a fetus, was executed by injection Friday after a 13-hour delay while his mental competency was questioned. Slawson was pronounced dead at 7:10 a.m., officials said. The execution came 14 years after the killings and 6 years after he began the process to drop his court appeals.

Slawson, 48, was convicted in the April 11, 1989, shooting deaths of Gerald and Peggy Wood, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant, and their 2 young children, Glendon, 3, and Jennifer, 4.

Slawson sliced Peggy Wood's body with a knife and pulled out her fetus, which had 2 gunshot wounds and multiple cuts, court records show. After the attack, Peggy Wood crawled down the stairs of their garage apartment, across a backyard to her mother's home and told her," Newton did it." She died in her mother's arms.

Just an hour before Slawson's scheduled execution Thursday, Gov. Jeb Bush issued a temporary stay so that 3 psychiatrists could examine whether Slawson was competent to be executed. Those psychiatrists reported to Bush around midnight and said they found Slawson aware of what the death sentence meant.

The standard for competency is understanding that execution will result in death and why the sentence is being imposed. Bush lifted the stay early Friday morning, prison spokesman Sterling Ivey said. The stay came after Bush's office received a letter from Slawson's former attorneys, Craig Alldredge and Brian Donerly, who challenged the condemned man's sanity. The attorneys said Slawson was mentally ill at the time of the slayings and remains insane. Earlier this week, Donerly accused the state of "helping the mentally ill commit suicide."

Slawson, who dropped his appeals in 2001 and asked for execution, had eaten his last meal, read from a Star Trek novel and visited with family members for the final time when given news of the stay. He was visibly upset by the delay, Ivey said. "He wanted the sentence to be carried out," Ivey said. At a court hearing in Tampa last month, Slawson told Circuit Judge Rex Barbas he wanted to be executed. "Judge, let's just end this please," he said. After his meeting with the psychiatrists ended around 10 p.m. Thursday, Slawson went to sleep and slept through the night, Ivey said.

In his trial, prosecutors claimed Slawson had fantasies about dismembering women. When he was arrested, police found bloody clothing, a bloody knife, a .357 revolver with blood on it, an assault rifle, 180 rounds of ammunition and a Penthouse magazine in which had drawn images of slit bellies on some of the nude photographs.

Defense attorneys argued that Gerald Wood had slipped crack cocaine into Slawson's beer, sending an unstable man into a killing rage. For the murders, Slawson received four death sentences, plus a 30-year sentence on a manslaughter conviction for the death of the fetus.

Since 1990, 6 of the 34 inmates executed have dropped their appeals. 4 of the 11 executed since 2002, have volunteered for execution. Abe Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said Slawson and other death row inmates who have volunteered for execution are mentally ill. "The only time the state will bend over backwards is when a prisoner wants to kill himself," Bonowitz said. "We consider it an assisted suicide."

Last fall, 2 inmates -- serial killer Aileen Wuornos and triple murderer Rigoberto Sanchez-Velasco -- were put to death after dropping their appeals. The judge also ordered mental exams for them in the days before their executions. Slawson becomes the 56th person executed since Florida resumed executions in 1979 and the 2nd to die this year. He was the 13th person executed under a death warrant signed by Bush.

(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)

Newton Slawson v. State of Florida

(State's Brief)

Defendant Slawson was charged with four counts of first degree murder and one count of killing an unborn child by injuring the mother in the deaths of Peggy Williams Wood, Gerald Wood, Jennifer Wood, and Glendon Wood (R. I/17-19).1 Slawson pled not guilty but was ultimately convicted as charged. Following the penalty phase of the trial, a jury recommended that the court impose four sentences of death (DA-R. 2144-47).

The judge followed the jury’s recommendation, finding prior violent felony convictions for each murder based on the contemporaneous killings and, as to the murder of Peggy Wood, finding the aggravating circumstance of heinous, atrocious or cruel (DA-R. 2157-60).

In mitigation, the trial court found no significant history of criminal activity, substantial impairment of the capacity to conform conduct to the requirements of law, and murders committed under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance; as well as nonstatutory mitigation of abuse as a child and the ability to act kindly and be friendly.

Slawson v. State, 619 So. 2d 255 (Fla. 1993) (Direct Appeal)

Defendant was convicted in the Circuit Court, Hillsborough County, Robert Bonnano, J., of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of killing unborn child by injuring mother, and was sentenced to death, and he appealed. The Supreme Court held that: (1) police did not violate defendant's rights under Edwards v. Arizona by advising him of his rights and insuring that he understood them, after he made equivocal request for counsel before being advised of his rights; (2) it was not fundamental error for state's expert witness to testify that in his opinion insanity and impairment defenses are "a charade"; (3) trial court properly considered evidence of circumstances of prior violent or capital felony in weighing aggravating factor for sentencing purposes; and (4) trial court properly found that aggravating circumstances outweighed mitigating circumstances. Affirmed.

PER CURIAM.

Newton Carlton Slawson appeals his convictions of four counts of first- degree murder and one count of killing an unborn child by injuring the mother and sentences, which include four death sentences. We have jurisdiction, article V, section 3(b)(1), Florida Constitution and affirm the convictions and sentences.

The following facts were developed at trial. On April 11, 1989, Peggy Williams Wood, her husband Gerald, and their two children, Jennifer, age four, and Glendon, age three, were murdered in their home. Also lost was the eight and one-half month fetus that Peggy Wood was carrying. At the time of the murders, the Wood family was living in a garage apartment next to Peggy Wood's parents' home in Hillsborough County.

Around 10:00 p.m. on April 11, Peggy Wood was discovered lying on her parents' back porch. She had been shot twice, once in the abdomen and once in the back, and cut from the base of the sternum to the pelvic area. Her right thigh also had been cut several times. Still conscious, Peggy told her mother, "He killed Gerry and the kids." When asked "who," Peggy answered, "Newton did it. Newton killed Gerry and the kids." Peggy Wood died a short time later.

Gerald Wood and the two children were found dead upstairs in the couple's apartment. All three died as a result of gunshot wounds. Gerald Wood had been stabbed in the abdomen after dying from a gunshot wound to the back that entered the heart. At the foot of the couch where Gerald's body was found the body of the couple's unborn baby was discovered. The fetus had two gunshot wounds and several lacerations all of which were caused by the injuries to the mother.

Slawson was apprehended later that night. A .357 revolver, which was later determined to be the murder weapon, was found in his automobile. A magazine with incisions drawn on the abdominal area of nude women also was found. After his arrest, Slawson told detectives that he went to the Woods' residence on the day of the murders. He took a six inch knife and a .357 revolver.

At Gerald's request, Slawson put the gun in the bathroom so the children would not get it. He gave the knife to Gerald Wood to use to cut rock cocaine. Gerald Wood offered to sell Slawson some of the cocaine but Slawson refused the offer. When Peggy said Slawson might be the police, Slawson went to the bathroom to get his gun so he could leave. When Slawson returned, Gerald Wood got up with the knife in his hand. According to his statement, Slawson shot Gerald and may have shot Peggy at that time.

As Slawson proceeded to the children's bedroom and shot them, Peggy Wood was screaming. After shooting the children he returned to the living room and shot Peggy again. Slawson then inserted his knife into Peggy Wood's abdomen and cut upward, causing the fetus to be expelled.

Slawson testified at trial that he believed he killed the Wood family but did not remember doing it. He believed that Gerald Wood had put drugs in his beer, causing him to feel odd and to believe he was locked in the apartment. He remembered stabbing Gerald and standing in the kitchen with the gun in his hand. He remembered determining that Gerald and Peggy were dead and trying to save the baby by making the incision into Peggy's abdomen.

According to his testimony, when Slawson determined that the baby was not going to survive, he left intending to commit suicide. However, he later returned to the scene to see if he had, in fact, killed the family and was arrested soon thereafter.

Slawson further testified about his "habit" of drawing incisions on pictures of nude women. He explained that he began drawing pictures of mutilated bodies when he was eleven years old. For years, Slawson had lived with a "mental quirk" causing him to continuously think about disemboweling women.

While in the Navy, Slawson discussed his problem with a psychologist, who told him the practice of drawing was "a useful tool for actualizing his aggressive tendencies" without actually harming anyone. According to Slawson, the psychologist told him to continue to draw but not to identify the pictures with anyone and to destroy the magazines after he drew on the pictures.

Slawson was found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of killing an unborn child by injury to the mother. Slawson was sentenced to thirty years imprisonment for manslaughter of the unborn child. In accordance with the jury recommendation, Slawson was sentenced to death for each of the first-degree murders.

The trial court found in aggravation as to each of the four murders that Slawson had been convicted of the three other capital felonies. As to the murder of Peggy Wood, the trial court found that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.

The trial court found the following statutory mitigating factors: 1) no significant history of criminal activity, although from Slawson's admissions and statements to mental health experts Slawson used illegal drugs habitually for years; 2) in the opinion of a defense expert, Slawson's capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of law was substantially impaired; and 3) in the opinion of a defense expert, the murders were committed while Slawson was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance.

As nonstatutory mitigating factors the court found that Slawson was abused as a child and he was capable of acts of kindness and could be a friendly person. Slawson appeals both his convictions and sentences.

* * * *

Accordingly, the convictions and sentences of death are affirmed. It is so ordered.

  

Newton Carlton Slawson