Tennessee set to execute woman for first time in over 200 years
If Christa Pike’s execution is carried out, she would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years and the 19th woman in modern U.S. history.
Florida has executed a 77-year-old death row inmate in the state’s third execution this month.
Florida executed Curtis Beasley by lethal injection on Tuesday, Sept. 29, for the brutal 1995 murder and robbery of 62-year-old Carolyn Monfort, a mother of three he had been living with at the time. Beasley, who has always maintained his innocence, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.
Beasley’s execution is the latest in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ aggressive push to clear out the state’s death row of inmates, many of whom are now elderly and were sentenced as many as five decades ago.
Of the 29 executions carried out by six states so far this year, Florida’s account for 16. That’s 55%. Of the Florida inmates put to death so far, 10 were over the age of 64, including Beasley. That’s 63%.
Beasley was among a growing number of elderly death row inmates whose physical and mental ailments have raised questions about the logic and ethics of executing people who either no longer understand what they did or are so ill that natural causes are soon to kill them.
DeSantis has said that meeting with the loved ones of victims reinforced his determination to see old death sentences carried out.
“There’s a saying: Justice delayed is justice denied,” he told ProPublica in June. “We’re doing it to be able to bring justice to the victims’ families.”
Here’s what you need to know about Beasley’s crime, his execution and what’s going on in Florida.
What was Curtis Beasley convicted of?
In August 1995, Jane O’Toole became worried when she couldn’t reach her mother, 62-year-old Carolyn Monfort. When Jane went to her mom’s home in the small central Florida town of Dundee, she discovered a nightmare: someone had bludgeoned Monfort to death with a hammer, court records say.
Monfort suffered up to 20 blows to the head and her arms were covered in defensive wounds. The killer stole $800 and her 1994 Oldsmobile Sierra.
Police immediately zeroed in on then-46-year-old Curtis Beasley, who had been staying in Monfort’s home for a few days while doing some maintenance at the apartment complex that she managed. Police arrested Beasley five months after the killing in Alabama, where he was living under a different name. Monfort’s Oldsmobile was recovered four months after that in Orlando, according to news reports at the time.
Very little linked Beasley to the crime scene, according to archived news reports and court records. Robert Norgard, one of Beasley’s attorneys, told jurors during trial that there were no eyewitnesses, no fingerprints, no confession, and no motive for Beasley to kill a woman he had known for 17 years.
Byron Hileman, another of Beasley’s attorneys, questioned the integrity of one of the prosecution’s key pieces of evidence, a bloody shirt that Monfort’s family said they found under Beasley’s bed while detectives were away from the crime scene. Prosecutors said the shirt was Beasley’s and that the blood was Monfort’s, reported the Lakeland Ledger, part of the USA TODAY Network.
There were “grave questions about the integrity and trustworthiness of evidence,” Hileman told jurors, the Ledger reported. Investigators “decided Curtis Beasley had done the killing and they did not explore all the facts.”
Beasley became visibly frustrated at various points during his trial and sentencing. When Judge Cecelia Moore sentenced him to death, telling him, “May God have mercy on your soul,” he responded defiantly and continued to proclaim his innocence.
“May God have mercy on yours,” he told the judge, reported the Tampa Tribune at the time.
In a letter handed out to members of the news media, Beasley wrote that “Moore sentenced an innocent man to death.”
“Just like the jury in my trial, she let blown-up autopsy photographs convict me,” he said, according to the Tribune. “I know my family, my lawyers and anyone who watched my trial knows that absolutely no evidence came from the witness stand to convict me of the murder of Carolyn Monfort.”
Prosecutor Cass Castillo told jurors that Beasley’s attorneys were trying to pull off a magic trick.
“Trust what your mind tells you is real or illusion,” he told them, according to the Ledger. “The inescapable conclusion is that Curtis Beasley is guilty of the brutal murder of Carolyn Monfort … The law does not say that if there are no eyewitnesses, fingerprints or a confession that you can’t convict.”
Make no mistake, Castillo told jurors: “Mr. Beasley had one thing on his mind, taking Mrs. Monfort’s money and killing her.”
O’Toole said that she was glad the “system has worked” after Beasley was convicted of murdering her mother but that she wasn’t so sure about his death sentence. “It doesn’t bring my mother back,” she said, according to the Tribune.
Curtis Beasley’s attorneys point to cognitive decline
Beasley’s attorneys had been arguing in his final days that he was experiencing brain fog and cognitive decline, and that executing him woud be a violation of constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
They argued to the Florida Supreme Court that Beasley needed a full battery of testing to determine the extent of his cognitive decline. But, they said, there was not enough time to do so given that there’s just about one month between when Gov. Ron DeSantis issues a death warrant and when the execution is carried out.
“While Florida has recently executed other inmates who are older than the age required to meet the statutory definition of ‘elderly,’ it has been recently begun executing such individuals at an alarming pace and made itself an outlier among the other states as well as the federal jurisdictions,” they wrote. “The execution of an elderly individual in Mr. Beasley’s current cognitive condition would simply be cruel and unusual.”
The Florida Attorney General’s Office argued that Beasley’s claims about being too infirm to execute are “meritless and legally insufficient.” Beasley should have raised such claims before his death warrant was issued, they argued.
“Beasley’s alleged brain fog and occasional need for a wheelchair are just additional symptoms related to his old age,” they wrote. “This claim is not rendered timely merely because Beasley waited until after a warrant was signed to have an expert evaluate him.”
The Florida Supreme Court denied Beasley’s appeal on Sept. 22.
What’s going on in Florida?
Florida is executing more elderly inmates than any other state, by far.
In 2025 and so far this year, six states have executed 30 inmates who were at least 62 years old, according to Death Penalty Information Center data analyzed by USA TODAY. Twenty-one of them were in Florida. That’s 70%.
Florida made state history this year when 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone became the oldest prisoner put to death in the state on July 28. He was executed for the 1986 shooting deaths of his ex-fiancée parents.
It’s unclear whether DeSantis is singling out old cases or if it’s just part of his overall aggressive death penalty stance. It’s also unclear whether the fast execution pace in the state will continue when DeSantis leaves office in January.
Beasley became the 16th inmate executed in Florida this year and the 29th in the U.S.
Contributing: C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY Network – Florida
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime and courts reporter who covers the death penalty, cold cases and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.