Death row inmate had surprising final words before execution by lethal injection
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: Florida Department of Corrections
America has now executed 26 death row inmates in 2025, surpassing last year's figures.
25 people were put to death in the US in 2024 and its scheduled that a total of 35 death row inmates will die this year, per the Death Penalty Information Center.
Meanwhile, for 2026, there are already eight death penalties set to be carried out.
The 26th person to be put to death this year was Michael Bernard Bell, who was pronounced dead yesterday (July 15) at Florida State Prison, where he had been holed up for two decades.
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Bell was facing the death penalty for the murders of Jimmy West, 23, and 18-year-old Tamecka Smith outside a Florida bar in 1993.
On the night in question Bell saw West driving a car that used to belong to the person who was responsible for his brother's death.
With this in mind, Bell believed West was linked to his sibling's murder and went on to recruit two of his friends to help him open fire on the vehicle.
But authorities said that West and Smith, who was also killed in the shooting, had nothing to do with Bell's brother's passing.
West died at the scene while Smith died in the ambulance on the way to hospital. A third person was also in the car who miraculously survived the incident.
As well as West and Smith's murders, Bell was later convicted for the deaths of three others, New York Post reports.
He fatally shot a mom and her toddler son in 1989 and, just a few months before West and Smith's slaying, Bell murdered his own mother's boyfriend.
After 20 years behind bars, Bell was pronounced dead at 6:25pm local time yesterday.
Speaking before the lethal injection was administered Bell said: "Thank you for not letting me spend the rest of my life in prison."
These were the 54-year-old's final words.
Eight of 2025's executions have taken place in Florida, with a ninth set to take place later this month.
This is a dramatic change to last year when the state only carried out one death sentence.
The next person set to be killed is Edward J. Zakrzewski II who will be put to death on July 31.
Like Bell, Zakrzewski has been in prison since the 1990s having been convicted in 1996 for the death of his wife and their sons, aged five and seven.
Reportedly Zakrzewksi's wife was trying to divorce him which sparked his fatal attack on her.