By Michael Moline | Editor in Chief
“Mr. Thompson appears to be in the final stages of physical and cognitive decline. He should spend his remaining days receiving appropriate medical treatment and compassionate care — not facing execution while his body and mind are failing.” — Scores of medical professionals in a letter urging Ron DeSantis to halt his execution
Emergency vehicles at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. The execution of death row inmate Christa Pike was halted nearly two hours after the state of Tennessee began the lethal injection protocol. (Photo by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
William Lee Thompson is to be executed next week, barring intervention by the courts or our governor’s better angels, for a murder he was convicted of committing in 1976. Now he suffers from sepsis, chronic kidney disease, severe fatty liver disease, acute systolic congestive heart failure, dementia, and surgical staples from a colostomy. Sounds like we could be setting ourselves up for a repeat of the hideous botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee — as of Sunday afternoon, she remained between life and death in a hospital. “Thompson’s medical conditions raise serious concerns about what could happen during an attempted lethal injection,” says Maria DeLiberato of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
COMMENTARY
Conservatives used to want to conserve. They wanted to conserve nature, wilderness, wildlife,” columnist Diane Roberts writes. “They valued American democracy, American traditions, and democratic institutions. Now they just want to destroy.” You see it in their disdain for the environment, their censorship of the wrong kinds of book or opinions, and sneering at science. Democrats are involved, too, as in lefty Tallahassee, where local authorities are encouraging urban sprawl. “It will be a miracle if in 10 years the whole state isn’t one big expanse of concrete and asphalt, an endless subdivision punctuated here and there by data centers, Wawas, and strip malls,” she writes.
Conservatives set out to quash a Biden administration rule protecting transgender people. They appear to have won, but the price could end up harming people with disabilities. At issue, Anna Claire Vollers reports, is Section 504, a landmark federal disability law Biden used to protect sufferers from “gender dysphoria.” Red states filed suit, but some didn’t let up even when Donald Trump took office and countermanded his predecessor. They still objected to the authority the rule gave the federal government to monitor state compliance with its directive to serve people with disabilities in the community, not institutions. Now a judge agreed with them and stricken the requirement.
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