Florida
Florida execution to be nation’s 2nd today, 4th this week. What to know about the case.
Edward Thomas James is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday for the brutal rapes and murders of a woman and her granddaughter. It’ll follow a morning execution in Oklahoma.
Firing squad executes Brad Keith Sigmon in South Carolina
A firing squad in South Carolina executed Brad Keith Sigmon for the beating deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 2001.
A Florida death row inmate is set to become the fourth man executed in the U.S. this week and the 10th so far this year.
Edward Thomas James, 63, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday for the brutal 1993 murders of 58-year-old Elizabeth “Betty” Dick and her 8-year-old granddaughter, Toni Neuner, who was raped.
James’ execution is expected to come about seven hours after the scheduled execution of Wendell Arden Grissom in Oklahoma for a home-invasion murder. It also comes two days after Louisiana executed Jessie Hoffman by nitrogen gas on Tuesday and a day after Arizona put Aaron Gunches to death by lethal injection on Wednesday.
If his execution moves forward, James will be the second inmate to be executed in Florida this year and the 10th in the U.S.
“This defendant deserves no more mercy than that he showed his two victims,” trial prosecutor Tom Hastings told jurors in 1995, according to an archived Associated Press story.
Although James has previously said he deserves to be executed, his attorneys have recently been fighting to save his life.
Here’s what you need to know about James’ execution, including why his attorneys say he deserves to be spared.
What did Edward Thomas James do?
On the night of Sept. 20, 1993, Betty Dick was at home in the metro Orlando city of Casselberry with four of her grandchildren, who were between the ages of 2 and 10, when James arrived. He had been renting a room in Dick’s home for about six months and had known the family for years, according to archived news stories.
Drunk and high on crack and possibly LSD, James apparently snapped, grabbing a sleeping 8-year-old Toni Neuner, strangling and brutally raping her before he threw her lifeless body behind his bed. He told detectives that he remembered thinking, “Eddie, this ain’t no fun … I’ll get me a grown woman.”
He then went to Dick’s bedroom, where he admitted to bludgeoning her, attempting to rape her and then stabbing her 23 times before fleeing the state with her purse, jewelry and car − setting off a frantic manhunt.
James confessed to the crimes after he was recognized on the “America’s Most Wanted” television show and captured in California following a 17-day manhunt. He has always acknowledged his guilt and has even said he deserves the death penalty.
“I don’t want to die but I do believe it’s the proper penalty for what I committed,” he said in court in 2003, according to an archived story in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. “From now until the time they execute me, I’m just going to exist, come as close to peace with what I did … I feel in my heart that I’m doing the right thing.”
Who were Betty Dick and Toni Neuner?
Betty Dick’s children told the Orlando Sentinel that their mother took James in out of the goodness of her heart and that no one in the family would have ever suspected him capable of murder.
That was just who Dick was: a loving grandmother always looking out for others, they said, adding that it was a struggle for her other grandchildren to understand what happened to her and Toni, described by her aunt as an outgoing girl who was inseparable from her older sister Wendi, who was in the home the night of the murders and tried to intervene before James tied her up.
“She’s got a lot of anger inside of her,” her aunt, Brenda Teed, told the newspaper. “It’s unbelievable what she watched happen. She thinks if she could have gotten up sooner, she could’ve saved them.”
She said that the family told Dick’s other grandchildren that “Grandma and Toni are in heaven, but they don’t understand why.”
“We tell them they can go outside and wave at the stars and they’ll be waving at Grandma,” she told the Sentinel.
As for James, she told the newspaper that they just wanted to understand why he did what he did.
“I’m angry as hell. I’m having a hard time believing in God,” Teed said. “We have to live with the images the rest of our lives of what he did to them.”
When and where will James be executed?
James is set to be executed just after 6 p.m. ET at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, about 40 miles west of Jacksonville.
What are James’ attorneys arguing?
James’ attorneys have been arguing that he isn’t fit for execution because he has experienced significant cognitive decline in recent years, to the point that he can’t remember simple words and loses track of conversations.
“He does not remember the homicides or his behavior leading up to them. However, he desired to be punished and even executed throughout the years,” psychologist Yenys Castillo wrote after evaluating James. “It is unclear whether Mr. James truly appreciated the seriousness and finality of being sentenced to die during his initial penalty phase and postconviction proceedings, and these competency concerns persist into the present day.”
In a recent court filing, his attorneys said that James pleaded guilty to the murders “despite a glaring lack of memory of the crimes,” adding that he suffers from “a nearly lifelong history of substance abuse, clear signs of mental illness, and memory impairment including indicators of early-onset dementia.”
His condition makes executing him cruel and unusual punishment, which is a violation of his constitutional rights, his attorneys have argued.
So far, all courts have rejected those arguments and little is standing in the way of James’ execution.
Florida
Florida college Republicans group chat reveals racist texts: ‘Avoid the coloreds like the plague’
It only took three weeks for a group chat for conservative students at Florida International University (FIU) to become a place where participants eagerly used racist slurs, prompting widespread condemnation from community leaders.
Abel Alexander Carvajal, secretary of Miami-Dade county’s Republican party and a student at FIU’s College of Law, reportedly started the chat after the killing of Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, in September 2025.
But on Wednesday, the Miami Herald published leaked WhatsApp conversations in which the college Republicans made racist, sexist, antisemitic and homophobic comments, including variations of the N-word used more than 400 times. Knowledge of the chat’s existence was revealed on the same day that Republican lawmakers in Florida pushed forward a bill to rename a one-mile stretch of road alongside FIU in honor of Kirk.
William Bejerano, who the Herald noted once tried to start an anti-abortion group at Miami Dade College, was the most prolific user of the N-word. Using the slur, Bejerano called for dozens of acts of extreme violence against Black people, including crucifying, beheading and dissecting.
Dariel Gonzalez, then the College Republicans’ recruitment chair, who has recently applied to become a GOP committee member, responded to the calls for violence by saying: “How edgy.” He repeatedly used “colored” to describe Black people, including writing: “Ew you had colored professors?!” and “Avoid the coloreds like the plague,” according to the Herald.
Carvajal, who was appointed to a two-year role on the city of Hialeah’s planning and zoning board earlier this year, confirmed to the paper that the group chat was his doing, but he denied knowledge of the problematic comments until the publication contacted him about its logs last week.
“It’s been five months since this was sent and this is the first time I’ve seen this message,” Carvajal told the Herald.
“I guess to an extent, I bear some responsibility, cause I created a chat. But if I had seen this at the moment, I would have removed [Bejerano] from the chat. I probably would have even blocked his number.”
The Herald found that Carvajal had deleted 14 messages sent by other participants in the chat and 42 of his own messages before the publication obtained the chat’s logs.
He also participated in some of the racist discussions. While referring to a Black student who allegedly left FIU’s College Republicans after a member of the group “called her a [N-word]”, the Floridian reported that Carvajal wrote: “Why didn’t miggress leave?” Elsewhere in the chat, the publication reported that Carvajal used “Miggress”, “Migglet” and “Migger” to refer to Black women, Black children and Black people, in general.
At one point, Gonzalez wrote: “You can fuck all the [K-word, a slur for Jewish people] you want. Just don’t marry them and procreate.”
Ian Valdes, the Turning Point USA FIU chapter president, responded, “I would def not marry a Jew,” before changing the group chat’s name from “Uber [R-word slur for disabled people] Yapping” to “Gooning in Agartha”. “Gooning” is a gen-Z slang term for male masturbation, while “Agartha” is a mythical white civilization promoted by Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful leaders in Nazi Germany next to Hitler.
Gonzalez reportedly described Agartha to the group chat as “Nazi heaven sort of”.
Kevin Cooper, the first Jewish chair of the Miami Dade Republican party, condemned the group chat in a statement published to X and called for Carvajal’s resignation.
“The majority of our board voted to request Carvajal’s resignation. We have commenced removal proceedings and look forward to resolution from the Republican Party of Florida,” he wrote.
That call was echoed by Juan Porras, a Republican state representative and Miami-Dade GOP state committee member, who said in a statement: “Leadership carries responsibility. When someone in a leadership role engages in this kind of behavior, it damages the trust placed in our party by voters across Florida. For that reason, I am asking the Miami Dade Republican party secretary to step down from this position.”
In a joint statement, Florida Republican state senators Alexis Calatayud, Ileana Garcia and Ana Maria Rodriguez denounced the chats and called for the expulsion from party leadership of its participants.
“The individuals in the group chat have exposed how profoundly misaligned their beliefs are to the views of the Republican party of Florida,” their statement said. “We call for the immediate expulsion of the individuals disseminating from any level of leadership of the Miami-Dade Republican Party … We will not tolerate bigotry or discrimination.”
Multiple leaked group chats from young Republicans have created controversy in recent years.
Last year, Politico published messages from a group chat of more than 100 conservatives across the country in which users also made racist and antisemitic comments. In 2022, a Young Republican group chat from North Dakota was revealed as a cesspool of homophobic and antisemitic rhetoric.
Florida
Federal judge blocks DeSantis executive order declaring CAIR a 'terrorist organization'
Florida
Gas prices rise in South Florida amid U.S. and Israel’s conflict with Iran, as the stock market also reports a dip
Four days into the Iranian conflict, gas prices are rising at many stations in South Florida.
“I’ve traveled all over the United States,” says Stacey Williams. CBS Miami spoke to him as he was gassing up on the turnpike. He paid $66 for 20 gallons of diesel to fill his pickup truck. Williams has noted the fluctuations in fuel as he drives to locations for his work on turbines. He just spent three weeks at the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant south of Miami.
“The salary we get paid per hour does not add up to what we pay for gas, housing, and food,” he says.
Mitchell Gershon is also dealing with the higher gas prices. He has to fill three vehicles constantly for his business—Thrifty Gypsy, a pop-up store at musical venues. He’s back and forth from Orlando to Miami and says fuel is costing him 20% more. When asked how he handles these fluctuations, he said, “Have a little backup cash so you are ready for it.”
The rise in oil prices contributed to a drop in the stock market on Tuesday, which means some retirement accounts dipped, too. CBS Miami talked to Chad NeSmith, director of investments at Tobias Financial Advisors in Plantation, for perspective on the drop.
“We are seeing most of the pullback today. Yesterday was a shock,” he says. He’s not expecting runaway oil prices but says investors should stay in the loop: “Pay attention to your portfolio. Stick to your goals. Have a plan because these things are completely unpredictable.”
That unpredictability has Williams adjusting his budget. “You just cut back, cut corners, all you can do,” he says.
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