Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
A man convicted of raping and murdering a 6-year-old girl in Central Florida will be executed under a death warrant signed in November. republican Governor Ron DeSantisWhich is setting a record pace of giving death sentence.
Brian Frederick Jennings, 66, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Nov. 13 at a Florida state prison. Jennings will be the 16th person to be executed in Florida in 2025. DeSantis has overseen more executions in a year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
DeSantis signed the death warrant on Friday, days before Samuel Lee Smithers’ scheduled execution on Tuesday. Another convicted murderer, Norman Merle Grimm Jr., is scheduled to die on October 28.
Jennings was convicted of murder, kidnapping and sexual assault and sentenced to death in 1986 after two previous convictions were overturned.
According to court records, Jennings climbed through the window of a Brevard County home in May 1979 and kidnapped 6-year-old Rebecca Kunash. Investigators said Jennings took the girl to an area near the Merritt Island Canal and raped her. After the attack, Jennings slammed the girl’s head to the ground and then drowned her in a nearby canal, where police later found her body.
A short time later, Jennings was arrested on a traffic warrant, and police eventually linked him to the girl’s murder.
Jennings’ attorneys are expected to file appeals in the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
35 people have been executed in the US so far in 2025, with Florida leading the way in a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. The most recent execution in Florida was the Sept. 30 lethal injection of Victor Tony Jones, convicted of killing a married couple during a robbery in South Florida in 1990.
The previous record for executions in a single year in Florida was eight, most recently in 2014.