Florida inmate executed in boy’s rape, murder

Juan Carlos Chavez, the South Miami-Dade sex predator who kidnapped, raped and killed 9-year-old Jimmy Ryce in an infamous 1995 murder, was executed Wednesday night.

Officials at Florida State Prison pronounced him dead at 8:17 p.m. on a damp, chilly evening in North Florida. “It’s closure. Justice has been served for an evil man,” said Pat Diaz, the retired Miami-Dade police detective who led the investigation into Jimmy’s murder.

Jimmy was missing for three months, before a police investigation discovered Chavez after a tip-off from the owner of a horse farm where he worked.

The farm’s owner found Chavez with Jimmy’s school bag and a weapon she had reported stolen.

The boy’s body was later discovered buried in cement in the garden of a nearby farm.

After Jimmy’s death, his parents pushed for stronger US laws for the confinement of sexual predators.

In his final appeal to the Supreme Court, Chavez argued for his constitutional right to avoid “cruel and unusual punishment”.

He said these rights would be violated if the state used a lethal cocktail to put him to death.

Florida, like other US states, has been experiencing a shortage of the most commonly used lethal injection anaesthetic, pentobarbital.

In response, it has been using a new cocktail since October which renders the inmate unconscious, followed by two additional drugs to paralyse and kill.

But the US Supreme Court denied the final appeal without explanation, giving the green light to execute Chavez.

Agencies/Canadajournal