Governor signs death warrant for killer of 3
JACKSONVILLE (AP) – In August, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd personally asked Florida’s governor to sign a death warrant for Paul Beasley Johnson in connection with the killings of a deputy sheriff and two others in 1981.
Weeks after Judd’s chance encounter with the state’s top elected official, Gov. Charlie Christ signed Johnson’s death warrant Wednesday and scheduled the inmate’s execution for Nov. 4 at Florida State Prison near Starke.
Johnson, 60, has been on death row for 28 years, longer than even one of his victims had lived – 27-year-old Deputy Theron A. Burnham. Thus Judd and his staff had waged a petition and letter campaign urging that the death sentence be imposed for the death of Burnham on Jan. 9, 1981, and two others.
Crist called Judd on Thursday morning to tell him he was signing Johnson’s death warrant.
“It’s time for the death sentence to be carried out,” Judd said in a telephone interview. “The bottom line is that Paul Beasley Johnson committed cold, calculated, atrocious murders that night.”
Judd met the governor last August at the funeral of a Tampa police officer and asked him to look into the case.
“He told me would be all over it and he kept his word,” Judd said.