Florida has carried out the execution of 74-year-old Harold Gene Lucas, who was convicted of murdering 16-year-old Jill Piper. He had spent nearly 50 years on death row and declined to file any further appeals.
The crime took place on August 13, 1976, in Bonita Springs. Lucas, then 24, had previously dated Piper and knew her family. After their relationship ended, he continued to stalk her and was once arrested for trespassing on her property.
On the day of the murder, Lucas arrived at Piper’s home while she was with two friends, Richard Byrd Jr. and Terry Rice. According to case records, he opened fire after she rejected his attempt to rekindle their relationship. Piper was killed, while her friends were wounded but survived, the Associated Press reports.
The legal proceedings spanned decades. Lucas was sentenced to death four separate times due to appeals and procedural errors identified during sentencing reviews. Before his scheduled execution, he chose not to seek another stay, citing exhaustion from his long years of imprisonment.
The sentence was carried out on the evening of September 1 at Florida State Prison near Starke. Lucas was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. When the warden asked if he had any final words, he declined to speak.
Lucas was the 14th person executed in Florida since the beginning of 2026. State authorities have scheduled two more executions for September. In total, 24 people were executed in the U.S. by the start of September this year, with more than half of those executions taking place in Florida. Relatives of the deceased and the injured stated that they had waited half a century for the sentence to be carried out. At the same time, they emphasized that the conclusion of the case could not fully undo the consequences of the crime.
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