**Norman Grim Executed for 1998 Sexual Assault and Murder in Santa Rosa County**
Norman Grim was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison for the 1998 sexual assault and murder of a woman in Santa Rosa County. Grim, 65, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m., becoming the 15th inmate executed in Florida this year—a modern-era record.
After death warrants are signed, attorneys for inmates usually file a flurry of legal arguments in state and federal courts in an attempt to halt executions. However, during an October 1 hearing in Santa Rosa County, Grim waived pursuing appeals.
Grim declined to make a final statement before the execution procedure started at 6:01 p.m. Tuesday. He was initially seen breathing heavily and twitching, but visible movement stopped by about 6:05 p.m.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for Grim on September 26. Grim was convicted in the July 1998 murder of Cynthia Chapman, an attorney and his neighbor in Santa Rosa County. Chapman’s body was found by fishermen in Pensacola Bay.
“She had suffered multiple blunt force injuries to her face and head consistent with hammer blows, and she was stabbed 11 times in the chest,” Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office said in a document filed with the death warrant at the Florida Supreme Court. “Seven of the stab wounds penetrated the victim’s heart. Physical evidence, including DNA, tied Grim to Ms. Chapman’s murder.”
Grim woke up at 6 a.m. Tuesday and had a last meal consisting of fried pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy, Brussels sprouts, a chocolate milkshake, banana cream pie, and a soda, according to Ted Veerman, communications director for the Florida Department of Corrections. Grim did not have any visitors on the day of his execution.
This execution continues Florida’s recent pace of putting two inmates to death per month. It followed the October 14 execution of Samuel Smithers, who was convicted of killing two women in 1996 in Hillsborough County and disposing of their bodies in a pond.
The previous modern-era record for executions in a year was eight, set in 1984 and matched in 2014. The modern era represents the time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling temporarily halted it.
While Grim did not contest his execution in court, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops urged Governor DeSantis to commute Grim’s sentence to life in prison, as it has with other inmates executed this year.
“We have the ability to keep society safe, to imprison somebody for life and incapacitate them,” said Joseph Harmon, policy coordinator for the conference. “In this kind of situation, we should use that alternative punishment and not take the drastic and unnecessary step of ending another human life.”
Governor DeSantis has also signed death warrants scheduling executions for Bryan Frederick Jennings on November 13, and Richard Barry Randolph on November 20.
– Jennings was convicted in the 1979 kidnapping, rape, and murder of a 6-year-old girl in Brevard County.
– Randolph was convicted in the 1988 rape and murder of a Putnam County convenience-store manager.
In addition to Smithers and Grim, the inmates executed in Florida this year are:
– Victor Jones on September 30
– David Pittman on September 17
– Curtis Windom on August 28
– Kayle Bates on August 19
– Edward Zakrzewski on July 31
– Michael Bell on July 15
– Thomas Gudinas on June 24
– Anthony Wainwright on June 10
– Glen Rogers on May 15
– Jeffrey Hutchinson on May 1
– Michael Tanzi on April 8
– Edward James on March 20
– James Ford on February 13
— Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida
https://flaglerlive.com/norman-grim/