This week in 1988

“I hope with all my heart I will be the last sacrificial lamb of a system that is not just, and all these people know it is not just. Let’s hope there are not many more that have to be sacrificed. The executions serve no purpose. . . . Some of you look at this as an execution. I look at this as freedom. I’ve been in prison for 15 years. Now I’m free.”

— Jeffrey Daugherty, convicted of murder, electric chair, Florida.
Executed November 7, 1988

Though Daugherty delivered a six-minute statement prior to his execution, little survives. Prosecutors claimed he killed four women in a three-week period while traveling with his girlfriend, Bonnie Jean Heath, and an uncle. Daugherty received life terms for three of the murders but was sentenced to death for the shooting of hitchhiker Lavonne Sailer. Heath testified against him in exchange for a twenty-five-year sentence for second- degree murder.