Florida Gov. LeRoy Collins’ hands trembled when he could no longer put off signing a death warrant. There would be 29 of them. His secretary said it made her physically ill to type them at first. But she got used to it.
Preparing to leave office, Collins appealed to his last session of the Legislature to abolish the death penalty. He was the first and last governor to do so. The year was 1959. The bill was defeated.
If executions were to end, a House committee report warned, “a recurrence of lynching in certain areas of Florida can certainly be anticipated.”
