SENTENCED TO DEATH, COMMUTED TO LIFE IMPRISONMENT AND MURDERED IN PRISON: BENNIE EDDIE DEMPS (EXECUTED IN FLORIDA ON 7 JUNE 2000) [ARTICLE ON THE DEATH PENALTY OF THE WEEK ~ SUNDAY 2 JUNE 2013 TO SATURDAY 8 JUNE 2013]

            On this date, 7 June 2000, a Prison Killer who once murdered outside bars before, Bennie Eddie Demps was executed by lethal injection in Florida. I will information about him from clarkprosecutor.org and also an article from Professor Robert Blecker.

 

Bennie Eddie Demps

Summary: Demps, James Jackson and Harry Mungin were convicted of the September 7, 1976 stabbing death of Alfred Sturgis at Florida State Prison. Sturgis, serving a life term for murder and allegedly a "snitch," was found in his cell, bleeding from multiple stab wounds. While transported to the hospital, Sturgis told two guards in a "dying declaration" that fellow inmates Demps, Jackson and Mungin attacked him. Another inmate, Larry Hathaway, testified that Mungin was standing in the door of Sturgis' cell while Demps was holding Sturgis down and Jackson was stabbing him with a homemade knife. Demps, Jackson and Mungin were part of a group of inmates that named themselves "Perjury Incorporated," a prison gang that rooted out inmate informants. 

At the time, Demps was serving a double life sentence for murdering two people in a Lake County orange grove in 1971. He was originally sentenced to death for the double homicide. Demps and Jackie Hardie reportedly had stolen a safe and taken it to the grove to try to open it. It was then that a local real estate agent showing land to a Connecticut couple seeking a retirement home stumbled upon the duo. The two robbers ordered all three of the victims into the trunk of a car and, when they tried to get out, Demps and Hardie opened fire, killing two of the victims (Celia and Nicholas Puhlick) and wounding the other, prosecutors said. The third victim, R.N. Brinkworth, survived and identified Demps and Hardie. Following the trial, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Furman v. Georgia(1972), and the death sentences were commuted to life terms. The Sturgis murder, however, occurred just two months after Florida had reinstated the death penalty, giving prosecutors a chance to send Demps to death row again. Mungin and Jackson received life sentences. "He had poor timing," said Greg McMahon, chief of special prosecutions for the 8th Circuit District Attorney's Office. Hardie died in prison on January 26, 1999. Demps was one of 95 men and one woman who had their death sentences commuted to life in 1972. 

ROBERT BLECKER’S ARTICLE: Prof. Robert Blecker’s Statement to accompany Testimony before the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission 10/11/06 (supplemented)

Benny Demps was listed as one of “four right from the top” on Florida’s death row “that are innocent”. (Colon)  I witnessed Benny Demps die.  I was permitted to witness the preparations for his death.  Here’s how and why.  The Puhlicks were good, upstanding folk. 

He was a government contractor; she was nicknamed “the flower lady” because she had a green thumb.  They worked hard – he as a contractor at a defense plant;  she, sometimes cleaning houses, to put the kids through college.  Her dream was to retire to Florida, and perhaps have an orange grove.

Her cousin, a real estate agent there, called them one day, telling them of a “handyman’s special” that included an orange grove which had fallen into disrepair.  He could fix it up, and she could bring the grove back to bloom.  So the Puhlicks went to Florida to see their dream house.  As luck would have it, Benny Demps and an accomplice had just robbed a house nearby, taken the safe to an abandoned orange grove to open it, when unexpectedly the Puhlick’s car drove down the road.  Demps pulled a gun, and announced a stickup.  When Mrs. Puhlick fumbled nervously for her wallet, she dropped a lipstick from her pocketbook.  As she instinctively bent to retrieve it, Demps shot her in the stomach.

He forced her husband into the trunk of the car, forced him to remove the spare tire, then climb back in.  Next the real-estate agent cousin was forced to follow.  And finally, Mrs. Puhlick, bleeding profusely, was forced into the trunk.  Demps slammed the trunk shut.  And before he left the grove, hearing the desperate cries of the three, he riddled the trunk with bullets, killing Mrs. Puhlick and the cousin, both of whom absorbed the bullets meant for Mr. Puhlick who lived.

Eventually Demps was caught.  All the evidence matched, including the murder weapon in the trunk of Demps’ car.  The eyewitness identification – not a fleeting glance  but a sustained encounter -- further confirmed guilt beyond all shadow of a doubt.  Benny Demps was a cold blooded, depraved murderer.  And so a jury sentenced him to die.  But then in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court decided Furman, holding that the death penalty as administered across the country was unconstitutional. And all the condemned, including Benny Demps, were released into general population.

Now a lifer inside, Benny Demps was convicted of murdering a fellow prisoner, perhaps a snitch.  Because of his prior history, a Florida jury again sentenced him to die.  The evidence was enough to convict, barely.  The crime itself, in isolation, in my view did not deserve death.  But Benny Demps deserved to die, and the People of Florida killed him.

Imagine he did not personally stab the victim inside the prison.  Imagine it had happened as he claimed.  Did Florida execute an “innocent” man?  Hardly.  I know this is politically incorrect to assert, but not all innocence is equivalent.  David “Itchy” Brooks serves a life sentence for a murder I believe he did not commit.  But he admitted to me that at age 19 he shot 57 people.  If he had been executed for that murder he did not commit, D.C. would have executed an “innocent” man.  And there are other notorious cases around the country of street thugs who may have been factually innocent of the murders for which they were convicted.  There was a saying in Lorton prison where I spent 2000 hours over 12 years interviewing convicted murderers, “Maybe you serve time not for what you have done all the time, but all the time you serve, you serve time for what you’ve done.”

             Executing the truly innocent is horrifying.  We must do all we can in a system of justice to prevent it.  But whether or not Benny Demps stabbed that fellow prisoner to death, it defiles the seriousness of the innocence to claim we executed an innocent man.

To kill a murderer like Benny Demps was justice – poetic justice alone, if he were factually innocent of the stabbing – but justice nonetheless.