RAIFORD – As drugs pumped through Michael Tanzi’s body earlier this month from a lethal injection at Florida State Prison, a group of 50 people gathered across the street.
They sounded a bell to communicate to the death-row inmate he wasn’t alone in his last moments.
Between rings of the bell, a protester called out names: “Michael Tanzi, James Ford…”
With each toll of the brown weathered bell reading “Oppose the death penalty, don’t kill for me,” protestors screamed the names of those who have been executed in Florida since 2023.
“Darryl Barwick, Loran Cole, Edward James…”
“Amazing Grace” floated through the air at 6:12 p.m., the time of his death, and the group mourned and prayed for Tanzi, who was sentenced to death for the 2000 killing of a Miami Herald employee.
But the lawn chairs, speakers, bell and signs reading “Thou shalt not kill” and “Death penalty soft on crime hard on taxpayers” isn’t an unusual scene for the prison. At every Florida execution — including Jeffrey Hutchinson’s execution set for Thursday — church-goers and members of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty gather, sometimes driving hours to reach the rural setting where the state executes its worst criminals.
Their mission: Put an end to the death penalty altogether.
Executive Director of FADP Maria DeLiberato has been to eight of the 10 Florida executions since she took over the company in June 2022. The 46-year-old Tampa resident has 22 years of experience as a capital defense attorney and prosecutor. She’s been to death row over 400 times to speak to inmates.
“I've known some of these men now for almost 20 years, and it’s just like, ‘How's it going? How are you doing? How's your family? How are your grandkids?’ And they ask me ‘How am I doing? How are the dogs?’” she said. “It's just an opportunity to be reminded of their community and how sad and broken our system is.”
She continues to show up, execution after execution, because “everybody is worth more than the worst thing they've ever done.”
Members of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, all of whom bussed from Daytona to make their voice heard, joined DeLiberato and other death penalty opponents.
The church’s Rev. Philip Egitto preached in the moments before Tanzi’s execution, saying the death-row inmate was drunk when he murdered the Miami Herald employee, and despite his actions, everyone falls short and sins — even in a drug or alcohol induced state.
“I can’t imagine anyone here ever being drunk and doing things that, perhaps, you didn’t know you were doing,” he told the crowd.
His statement received chuckles and nods.
“We don't care to become murderers, killing people who kill people, to stop people from killing people, it makes no sense to us,” he said.
And while the group gathers in masses in the strip of land across the prison at every execution, they don’t just pray and protest for the death row inmates, but the victims of those who are executed.
On April 8, that was Janet Acosta, whom Tanzi kidnapped and strangled near Key West.
“You don’t have to choose sides,” DeLiberato said. “I can both grieve for the victims and be sad that this is happening, that doesn't mean I want them to die, but I can hold both of those things in my heart at the same time.”
Those in support
One man sat in the area marked for supporters, a contrast to the dozens on the opponent side.
When Bill Campbell, 70, of Marion County, first went to Raiford State Prison on March 20 to show support for the execution of Edward James, he expected more people to want to show their support for the government. James was convicted of murdering an 8-year-old girl and her grandmother in 1993.
He made a sign labeled “Bye bye Eddy” to wear around his neck, but upon arrival, he was met with a large police presence and the Our Lady of Lourdes bus.
“I don’t understand the protestors,” he said. “Like, who’s paying for that bus?”
He sat in the same field two weeks later for Tanzi’s execution and crossed out the word “Eddy” and added “Mikey.”
After seeing the number of people protesting the death penalty, he amped up his materials.
For Tanzi’s execution, while he still brought his “Bye bye Mikey” sign, he added a stereo and American flag.
The protestors preached and sang church songs, and Campbell matched them with music from his pre-made playlist featuring what he called “awesome military songs.”
“There's nothing wrong with putting somebody to sleep. It's been examined by the legislatures of many states, the courts, the executive branch at the federal and state levels. You know it's approved,” he said. “This guy today deserved it. The guy two weeks ago deserved it.”
The death row process
Currently in Florida, executions are either carried out by lethal injection, as with Tanzi, or by electrocution at the state’s prison in Raiford.
As of April, 273 Florida inmates are on death row, with only one woman, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. It’s the second highest number of inmates in the U.S. set for capital punishment, the first being California with 589 condemned inmates as of April, according to California data.
And while California has the most number of inmates facing execution, the state is in a moratorium, where the death penalty will only be pursued in extremely rare cases. It hasn’t been used since 2006.
When deciding if a defendant is sentenced to death, eight out of 12 jurors must decide on the death penalty — the lowest in the U.S. Before 2023 and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ time as governor, Florida required a unanimous decision.
Once that decision has been made, DeSantis can sign a warrant for death-row inmates at any time, FADP executive director DeLiberato said.
“He could do that tomorrow, he could do that next week, he could do that never,” she said.
One of her clients, John Buzia, who previously faced the death penalty, but got his sentence changed to a life sentence, described the process as “traumatizing.”
Before death row inmates have warrants signed by the governor, they’re held in the state’s Union Correctional Institute, also in Raiford, but once a warrant is issued, the prison guards come down to the inmate’s cell, read them the warrant and take them out to transfer them to Raiford State Prison.
The traumatizing part, according to Buzia: the sound of the cell doors when inmates were transferred.
She said Buzia didn’t have the fear that death would come for him in the form of a signed warrant, but a hundred other inmates did, and all he heard day after day was the “clings and clangs” of the cell doors.
Florida’s next execution will occur on Thursday at 6 p.m., when the state will lethally inject Jeffrey Hutchinson for the 1998 quadruple murder of his girlfriend and her three kids.
DeLiberato plans to protest Hutchinson’s sentence to death along with any that follow.
“We're going to lose a lot of these, most of them, right? We're going to lose a lot of battles,” she said, “but the fight matters, and it matters to the client to know that there are people out there saying that this is wrong.”
