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John Arthur Spenkelink (born March 29, 1949 in San Diego, California — died May 25, 1979 in Raiford, Florida) was the first person executed in Florida and the second nationwide since the reintroduction of the death penalty in the United States in 1976. Unlike the first nationwide since the reintroduction (Gary Gilmore), Spenkelink fought his execution until the very end. The last person executed in Florida before the reintroduction of the death penalty had been in 1964 and the last one nationwide had been in Oklahoma in 1966. After serving in a California prison for petty crimes he travelled to Florida with another prison inmate. He was condemned to death in 1973 for murdering a traveling companion (named Joseph J. Szymankiewicz) who, Spenkelink alleged, had offered him homosexual relations and forced him to play Russian roulette in a Tallahassee motel. Spenkelink's case raised some controversy because he claimed he shot the victim in self-defense. According to Spenkelink's attorney, there was a good chance the sentence would be commuted. Spenkelink was offered to admit to second-degree murder and receive a life sentence, but he refused. In 1977 Governor Reubin O'Donovan Askew signed his first death warrant, but the court stayed execution. In 1979 the new governor, Bob Graham, signed the second and, despite Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who issued a stay, this was the final death warrant. After the execution, rumors spread that the fighting, shouting Spenkelink was dragged to the electric chair, gagged, beaten, and had his neck broken. The rumors caused Spenkelink's body to be exhumed for an autopsy and the State further decided to perform autopsies on all executed inmates. Some witnesses believe Spenkelink was already dead when placed in the electric chair. He is known for his quote "Capital punishment means those without capital get the punishment." Later in that spring of 1979, Ted Bundy would occupy the same cell at Florida State Prison as Spenkelink had occupied.
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