14 November 2025 :
November 13, 2025 - Florida. Bryan Jennings, 66, White, was executed.
Jennings was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford on November 13, 2025. He declined to give a final statement. His execution was the 16th in Florida that year, a record for the state.
Jennings, a former Marine, was sentenced for the May 11, 1979 rape and murder of a six-year-old girl, Rebecca Kunash. Following a trial in 1980 and two re-trials between 1982 and 1986, Jennings was eventually sentenced to death for the murder. At the time of the crime Jennings was 20.
Thursday morning, before the execution, Jennings had one visitor and declined to meet with a spiritual advisor. The Department of corrections would not identify the visitor. There were no protesters, no supporters, no family at the pre-execution staging area just outside Florida State Prison. Only four members of the media attended the execution.
At 6:04 p.m. shortly after receiving the lethal injection cocktail, Jennings jerked once then began twitching. The twitching seemed to stop at 6:06 p.m. An attending officer shook his body hard and yelled his name twice. Jennings proceeded to twitch once more after that. By 6:07 p.m., his mouth fell open and by 6:10 p.m. all the color had left his face. A doctor was called in at 6:19 p.m. and by 6:20 p.m. she pronounced him dead. Other reporters at the execution said this one took longer than others. Typically, they said death is pronounced at 6:15 p.m.
Jennings admitted to police that he had been out drinking on Merritt Island the night of Rebecca Kunash's murder.
On May 11, 1979, the 20-year-old Jennings, who was home on leave from the Marine Corps, abducted Becky Kunash from her bedroom after spotting her through a window. He drove her to a nearby canal where he sexually assaulted her, slammed her head into the ground, causing a skull fracture, and held her head underwater until she drowned. Her naked body was found by a fisherman the next afternoon.
Jennings was arrested shortly after, and evidence against him included his fingerprints on the girl's window, a matching shoe print outside, and a confession to police. He was convicted and sentenced to death three separate times (in 1980, 1982, and 1986), with the first two convictions overturned on appeal due to procedural errors.
Jennings becomes the 16th person executed this year in Florida, the 122nd overall since Florida resumed capital punishment in 1979, the 42nd person to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,649th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Florida man, Bryan Jennings, executed for rape and murder of 6-year-old
