ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A twice-convicted murderer who has lived on Florida's death row for more than three decades is scheduled to die by lethal injection this week for killing a St. Petersburg mother — but like many executions, why he is being killed now and why it didn't happen years ago are both something of a mystery.
If 65-year-old Robert Brian Waterhouse is executed Wednesday at Florida State Prison near Starke, he will have lingered on death row longer than any of the previous 276 people executed by the state, according to the Department of Corrections. He's spent more than 31 years mostly by himself in a 6-by-9-foot cell as his various appeals worked their way through the courts.
Just 18 of the 395 people currently on death row have been there longer than Waterhouse, who was sentenced in September 1980 for raping and killing 29-year-old Deborah Kammerer.
No one in Gov. Rick Scott's office would talk in detail about the process that led him to pick Waterhouse over others whose appeals have run their course. It's the third death warrant Scott has signed since taking office in January 2011.
Source: The Republic, Feb. 12, 2012
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