USA - Florida. John Ferguson, 65, Black, was executed

John Ferguson, 65, Black, was executed. Ferguson was sentenced to death on May 27, 1983. He confessed to the killing 8 people in two separate incidents. On July 27, 1977, during a home invasion, he murdered Henry Clayton, Randolph Holmes, Michael Miller, Charles Stinson, Livingston Stocker and Gilbert Williams. On January 8, 1978, he raped and murdered Belinda Worley and killed her boyfriend, Brian Glenfeldt; they were both 17 years old. He had 2 co-defendantes, Marvin Francois and Beauford White. Francois was executed on May 29, 1985. White was executed on August 28, 1987. In 1971, a court-appointed doctor diagnosed Ferguson as paranoid schizophrenic, saying he had a "severely damaged ability to distinguish right from wrong." In the mid-80s, a decade after Ferguson's crimes, Florida's state prison system described him as incompetent to stand before a court, saying he did not know what a judge was and did not understand a lawyer's function. And in 2004, Ferguson's schizophrenia was deemed "incurable." Florida, however, has ruled that Ferguson can be executed even if he doesn't rationally understand his execution, because he is intellectually aware of it. The ruling is problematic because those who suffer from schizophrenia often have high IQs, obscuring the fact that they are severely delusional. Ferguson becomes the 4th inmate to be put to death this year in Florida, the 78th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1979, the 23rd inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1343rd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.