Florida executes 74-year-old man for wife's murder in Orange County

Dusty Ray Spencer was put to death by lethal injection on Thursday at Florida State Prison in Starke for his wife’s murder more than three decades ago in Orange County.

Spencer, 74, became the oldest person put to death by the state in the modern era. He was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m., according to the state Department of Corrections.

The execution came about two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied the latest request for a stay from Spencer’s attorneys.

Spencer is the ninth Death Row inmate executed by lethal injection this year, a pace slightly behind Florida’s modern-era record of 19 executions conducted last year.

Opponents of the death penalty included Spencer’s age in arguments that also pointed to him being a survivor of sexual abuse by his father, having overcome substance addictions, and having changed for the better while on Death Row.

Jeff Hood, Spencer's spiritual advisor, described the state’s pending action as a “nursing home execution.”

“The fact that Dusty Ray Spencer is being executed at his age, in his health, says everything we need to know about how haywire this entire system has gone,” Hood said in a June 18 conference call.

Among the arguments from Spencer’s attorneys rejected last Thursday by the Florida Supreme Court was that the execution would constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, given his advanced age.

The Florida Supreme Court noted, “The only age-based exemption from execution recognized by the United States Supreme Court is for individuals under the chronological age of eighteen when they committed the offense.”

The prior oldest inmate executed by the state was Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, who was put to death Oct. 14, 2025, for the 1996 deaths of two women in Hillsborough County.

According to court records, Spencer had a violent history with his wife, Karen, before stabbing her to death in the backyard of their home on Jan. 18, 1992.

A little more than a month earlier, records state Spencer choked, hit, and threatened to kill his wife after questioning her about withdrawing money from a bank for their painting business. Dusty Spencer was jailed, but Karen later requested he spend the holidays at home.

On Jan. 4, her teenage son intervened when he awoke to find Dusty Spencer hitting Karen Spencer with a clothes iron.

Dusty Spencer fled, only to return less than two weeks later, when her son found his mother being hit by a brick in their backyard. The son grabbed a rifle from his mother’s bedroom but it misfired. As Karen Spencer begged for the attack to stop, her head was slammed against a concrete wall and Dusty Spencer threatened the teenager with a knife.

When police arrived, Karen Spencer was dead.

“She had been stabbed several times in the chest, had cuts on her face and arms, and suffered blunt force trauma to the back of her head,” records state.

Spencer was charged with first degree murder, along with aggravated assault, attempt to commit murder in the first degree and aggravated battery, Spencer was sentenced to death on December 21, 1992 and resentenced to death on January 18, 1995.

In the resentencing order, Circuit Judge Belvin Perry noted that Karen Spencer was “alive and conscious” throughout the beating.

“The stark terror she must have felt (knowing the prior threats by the Defendant to take her life) as her life slipped away from her; the humiliation as the Defendant lifted her clothing exposing her private parts to her son, while she was laying there bleeding, in pain, pleading for the Defendant to stop as he bashed her head against a concrete wall, is beyond comprehension,” Perry wrote. “The victim’s acute awareness of the Defendant’s continued assault in the face of her pleas makes this an especially cruel murder.”

Spencer likely won't hold the distinction of being the oldest executed inmate for long.

Dennis Sochor, 74, is scheduled to be put to death July 14 for the death of an 18-year-old woman he met at a New Year’s celebration in a Broward County bar 44 years ago.

Sochor is 12 days younger than Spencer. The warrant signed by DeSantis scheduled the execution 19 days after Spencer's execution.