A man who fatally shot a man and woman outside a Jacksonville bar as part of an attempted revenge killing is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday.
Michael Bernard Bell, 54, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, barring a last-day reprieve. He was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murders of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith.
Michael Bell would be the eighth person put to death in Florida this year, with Edward Zakrzewski scheduled to be the ninth later this month. The state executed six people in 2023, but carried out only one execution last year.
Attorneys for Bell have filed appeals with the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
The lawyers argued in their state filing that Bell's execution should be halted because of newly discovered evidence about witness testimony. But justices unanimously rejected the argument last week and pointed to overwhelming evidence of Bell's guilt in a 54-page opinion.
Bell's attorneys filed a similar petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, but the panel has not yet issued a ruling.
In December 1993, Bell spotted what he thought was the car of the man who fatally shot his brother, according to court records. Bell was apparently unaware that the man had sold the car to West.
Bell called on two friends and armed himself with an AK-47 rifle, authorities said. They found the car parked outside a liquor lounge and waited. When West, Smith and another woman eventually exited the club, Bell approached the car and opened fire, officials said.
West died at the scene, and Smith died on the way to the hospital. The other woman escaped injury. Witnesses said Bell also fired at a crowd of onlookers before fleeing the area. He was eventually arrested the next year.
Bell was later convicted of three additional murders. He fatally shot a woman and her toddler son in 1989, and he killed his mother's boyfriend about four months before the attack on West and Smith, officials said.
Meantime, attorneys for Zakrzewski on Monday appealed to the Florida Supreme Court after an Okaloosa County circuit judge refused to halt his scheduled July 31 execution.
Zakrzewski received three death sentences in the 1994 murders of his wife, Sylvia, his 7-year-old son Edward and his 5-year-old daughter Anna. He committed the murders in their Okaloosa County home after his wife wanted a divorce, according to court records.
Twenty-five men have already been executed in the U.S. this year, tying last year's total.
Florida has executed more people than any other state this year. Texas and South Carolina have each executed four. Alabama has executed three people, Oklahoma has killed two, and Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee each have killed one.
