Florida has scheduled Michael Zack's execution for October 3, 2023 for the 1996 murders of Laurie Russillo and Ravonne Smith.

On direct appeal, Zack raised twelve issues challenging both his convictions and his sentence of death. In part, Zack argued that the trial court failed to consider certain mitigation, among them:

• Zack's brain damage;
• Zack's skewed perception of reality;
• Zack's mental hospitalization when he was eleven years old;
• Zack's dysfunctional family;
• Zack's mental age of fifteen years and emotional maturity of ten years;
• Zack's alcohol and marijuana addiction; and
• Zack's tragic childhood.

"Michael’s story is nothing short of horrific. I am sorry to have to share these details with you. And yet: We must continue to tell the truth about who we are executing.

We are executing infant Michael, who grew in his alcoholic mother’s womb and was born prematurely after her car accident. His military father left shortly after his birth, and his mother’s next husband was sadistically abusive toward Michael and his sisters.

We are executing three-year-old Michael, who has to be hospitalized after he drank a bottle of vodka and overdosed on the drugs his stepfather fed him. His stepfather threw him against walls, kicked him with spurred boots, and tried to drown him.

We are executing pre-teen Michael, who was so traumatized from the abuse that he wet his bed nightly through middle school. This only singled him out for more punishment – his stepfather forced him to wear his urine-soaked sheet around his neck, heated a spoon until it was red hot, and held it against Michael’s genitals.

The trauma in the Zack family didn’t end there. When Michael was 11, his mother was murdered with an axe. Both Michael and his sister were then sent to separate institutions in Louisiana, and Michael was later sent to foster care, where he was further abused.

Michael suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic depression, fetal alcohol syndrome, and organic brain damage. Mental health experts opined that he had the mental and emotional age of a 10 or 11-year-old child." ~Maria DeLiberato (Executive Director of Floridian's For Alternatives to the Death Penalty)

Read Maria's entire statement on Michael Zack here.

Florida's return to executions in 2023, after more than three years of not pursuing them, marks the state as an outlier in its use of the death penalty. The majority of other states are on a downward trend of executions. Please sign the petition asking Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida State Board of Executive Clemency to do everything within their power to stop this execution, including issuing a stay, and seeking a path to clemency in the case.