Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a death warrant for William Lee Thompson, setting an October 13 execution date for a man convicted of torturing and killing a 23-year-old Georgia woman in a North Miami Beach motel room nearly half a century ago. Thompson, now 74, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6:00 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Raiford, capping a legal saga that has stretched across five decades.
According to Tampa Free Press, the warrant was signed on September 11, and Randall Polk has been directed to carry out the death sentence. Thompson was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping and involuntary sexual battery in the March 30, 1976 death of Sally Ivester, a 23-year-old visiting South Florida from Georgia. The killing has drawn renewed attention as one of the longest-running capital cases in Florida history, according to Wikipedia's account of the case.
A Ransom Call, Then a Return to Horror
Thompson and his co-defendant, Rocco James Surace, held Ivester and another woman, Barbara Savage, in a motel room, the Tampa Free Press report states. Ivester was taken to a phone booth to call her mother for ransom money, but she was unable to obtain the $200 to $300 the men demanded, per that reporting. The dossier's Wikipedia entry adds that Ivester managed to secure only $25 and reassured her mother during the call despite a strained voice, even as her captors waited nearby.
When the group returned to the motel room, Thompson and Surace resumed the beatings, according to the Tampa Free Press account. Court records described by Wikipedia detail that the assault involved a chain belt, a nightstick, a chair leg and lighted cigarettes, leaving Ivester with deep bruises, cuts and burns covering roughly 80 percent of her body. She ultimately died from internal bleeding and multiple injuries, the Tampa Free Press reports. Savage, who was held in the same room throughout the attack, later testified about what she witnessed, telling investigators she did not intervene out of fear for her own life, according to Wikipedia.
Decades of Appeals and a Co-Defendant's Different Fate
Thompson's path to death row was anything but straightforward. He initially pleaded guilty to the charges, but the Florida Supreme Court allowed him to withdraw that plea on direct appeal in 1977, per the Tampa Free Press. He received a death sentence in 1978 after pleading guilty again on remand, but a court order in 1987 sent the case back for resentencing, and Thompson was sentenced to death again in August 1989 — a sentence the Florida Supreme Court affirmed in 1993, according to the same reporting.
Surace's case took a markedly different turn. He was also initially convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, but after winning an appeal for a new trial, he was convicted instead of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, according to Wikipedia. Surace died while incarcerated in November 1993, meaning he never faced execution for a crime that Wikipedia's account notes he initiated over the disputed ransom money before both men tortured the victim.
The Constitutional Fight Over Decades on Death Row
Thompson's case became a flashpoint in a national legal debate in March 2009, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal arguing that his then-32-year stay on death row amounted to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The dossier notes that Justices Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens cited the “dehumanizing effects” of extended isolation, while Justice Clarence Thomas countered that condemned inmates cannot complain about delays caused by their own appeals, a split detailed in court records reviewed via Law.Cornell.Edu. Thompson spent decades in a 6-by-9-foot isolation cell while litigating those appeals, according to that same record.
His appeals also pressed claims of intellectual disability. The Florida Supreme Court ordered a new evidentiary hearing in 2016 to evaluate those claims under updated U.S. Supreme Court precedent, but a Miami-Dade circuit court in 2020 retroactively applied a subsequent state Supreme Court ruling to deny him that hearing and uphold his death sentence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Thompson pursued extensive state and federal appeals over several decades, per the Tampa Free Press, and those appeals were ultimately denied.
DeSantis Signs Off as Executions Accelerate Statewide
In signing the warrant, Governor DeSantis noted that executive clemency had been formally considered under the Florida Constitution and was determined not to be appropriate, according to the death warrant cited by the Tampa Free Press. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier provided a case summary to the governor and advised that the legal record supported issuing the warrant; per Uthmeier's letter, no active stays of execution remain in place for Thompson.
Once a warrant is signed, Florida's courts move fast. The Florida Supreme Court issued an order requiring all trial court post-conviction proceedings to be completed and orders entered no later than 11:00 a.m. on September 25, according to a filing in the Supreme Court of Florida's case docket.
Thompson's warrant is the 17th signed in Florida this year, continuing an unprecedented pace of capital punishment under DeSantis that followed 19 executions carried out statewide in 2025, according to a report cited on the podcast platform tracking Florida executions this year. Hoodline has covered several of these cases in recent months, including the ex-nurse tied to hog trail murders and the 80-year-old Pasco man's grim milestone. Born in February 1952, Thompson was 24 at the time of the murder and will be 74 when he is executed, having spent nearly 48 years on death row — one of the longest such stays in Florida history.
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