Inmate Mike Bell had been found guilty of killing two in Jacksonville in 1995.
Michael Bernard Bell was executed by the state of Florida on Tuesday for killing two people in 1995. Photo courtesy of Florida Department of Corrections/Website
The United States set a 10-year high for capital punishment before August when Florida executed death row inmate Michael Bernard Bell on Tuesday for gunning down two people outside a Jacksonville bar in 1993.
Bell, 54, was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford, which is located 45 miles southwest of Jacksonville. He was pronounced dead at 6:25 p.m. EDT Tuesday, the Florida Department of Corrections confirmed in a statement.
He was executed after the Supreme Court denied his two final petitions on Tuesday, one of which Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said they would have granted.
“Thank you for not letting me spend the rest of my life in prison,” Bell said as his final statement.
Bell was convicted of shooting and killing Jimmy West, 22, and Temecka Smith, 18, with a military-style AK-47 semiautomatic rifle outside the Moncrief Lounge in Jacksonville on Dec. 9, 1993, The Florida Times-Union reported.
Prosecutors said Bell thought West was another man who had killed his brother, Lamar Bell, in June 1993 and spent months planning to avenge his brother’s death.
Court records indicate a man named Theodore Wright killed Lamar Bell in self-defense.
Wright owned a yellow Plymouth when he killed Lamar Bell and afterward sold it to West, who was his half-brother.
Michael Bell located the vehicle outside the lounge on Dec. 9, 1993, and opened fire on West and Smith after they entered the vehicle.
The Florida Supreme Court unanimously rejected a stay of execution motion by Bell due to “overwhelming evidence” against him, the Times-Union reported.
Bell was the eighth person put to death in Florida this year, which ties 2025 with the previous record reached in 1984 and 2014, respectively.
The United States has 27 states that allow capital punishment, while 23 states and the District of Columbia ban it.
Florida has at least nine more inmates slated for execution in 2025.
When added to other executions that have happened and are scheduled nationwide for 2025, the total comes to 35 people to be killed by the United States this year.
That’s nowhere near the 98 people executed in 1999, but it represents a 40% increase over the 25 executions carried out in 2024, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Alabama led the nation with six executions last year, followed by Texas with five.
Only seven other states executed inmates for capital offenses last year, with Oklahoma and Missouri each executing four prisoners and South Carolina two.
Utah, Florida, Georgia and Indiana each executed one prisoner in 2024.
