Inmate Volunteers for Execution After Being Declared Competent
By Ron Word Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 2, 2002




STARKE, Fla. (AP) - Rigoberto Sanchez-Velasco, convicted of slaying two
other death row inmates and an 11-year-old girl, faces lethal injection
Wednesday after dropping his appeals and being declared competent to be
executed.
Sanchez-Velasco is scheduled to die at 9:30 a.m. EDT Wednesday at
Florida
State Prison near Starke.

He was sentenced to death in 1988 after confessing to the slaying of
Kathy
Encenarro, the 11-year-old daughter of his live-in girlfriend, Marta
Molina.

The girl's body was found naked and bleeding in Molina's apartment on
Dec.
12, 1986. A medical examination showed she had been raped and
strangled.

While in prison awaiting execution, Sanchez-Velasco was convicted in
the
1995 stabbing deaths of two other death row inmates - Edward B. "Mike"
Kaprat III and Charles Street. He was given two 15-year sentences.

A psychiatric exam conducted Tuesday by three doctors appointed by Gov.
Jeb
Bush ruled Sanchez-Velasco "has no major psychiatric illness and
understands
the nature and effect of the death penalty and why it is being imposed
upon
him."

Sanchez-Velasco was very calm and answered all the questions put to him
by
the psychiatrists, said Baya Harrison III, a Monticello lawyer
appointed to
represent the inmate.

"He made it very clear to me that his mind is made up," Harrison said.
"He
was very coherent. He was cogent. He was courteous. He instructed me
not to
interfere with his execution."

Dianne Abshire, a member of the Florida Support Group, who asked the
State
Supreme Court for a mental exam of Sanchez-Velasco, blasted the
procedure
used by Bush.

"Just because you can pay to have Ricky labeled incompetent, does not
mean
that he is. And, to kill an insane person is still immoral and illegal
regardless of the urgent label of sanity that will be attached to him
by
your for sale experts," she said in a letter to Bush.

Sanchez-Velasco asked for a final meal of fried fish, chicken fried
rice,
cheese cake and milk, said Debbie Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the
Florida
Department of Corrections.

Sanchez-Velasco, 43, had argued in a handwritten filing with the
Florida
Supreme Court that he was legally convicted and wants to die.

"This court must not interfere or delay the legal process of my case or
my
sentence, which is to be carried out," he wrote.

"I have killed people repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, even while
being
on death row," Sanchez-Velasco said.

In an earlier court hearing, Sanchez-Velasco said, "I hate people. I
don't
like them. I want to kill people. You understand!"

Sanchez-Velasco has made several attempts to stop court appeals,
including
writing three letters to then-Gov. Lawton Chiles in 1994 and 1995.

Sanchez-Velasco came to Dade County from Cuba in the 1980 Mariel
boatlift.
In 1997, Pedro Medina, another Cuban who came to Florida during the
same
period, was executed for the 1982 slaying of his neighbor, Dorothy
James,
52, in Orlando.

Serial killer Aileen C. Wuornos, 46, is scheduled to die Oct. 9, for
the
killings of six men in central Florida in 1989 and 1990.

She also had a competency exam Tuesday. State Attorney John Tanner of
Volusia County, said she appeared to be competent, although the report
of
the three experts had not been completed.

The death warrants for Wuornos and Sanchez-Velasco were signed while
the
state Supreme Court continued to review whether a ruling by the U.S.
Supreme
Court in an Arizona case would apply to Florida's 369 death row
inmates. The
high court ruled that only juries and not judges can sentence inmates
to
death. In Florida, juries make a recommendation to the trial judge, who
imposed the sentence.

Two years ago, Florida executed a death row inmate after a trial judge
concluded the condemned killer believed he was Jesus Christ. Thomas
Provenzano was found competent because he understood that his execution
would result in his death and knew that he had killed his victim.

Since the state reinstated its death penalty in 1976, four other
inmates have dropped their appeals and have been executed.

Sanchez-Velasco will be the 52nd person executed in Florida since the
state resumed executions in 1976 and the eighth to die from lethal injection.
Florida has executed 246 inmates since 1924.

Execution date..2nd October 2002 @ 9.30am EDT