Execution Stayed in ‘Black Widow’ Case
A federal appeals court Saturday indefinitely stayed the “Black Widow” killer’s scheduled execution to hear arguments that Florida’s electric chair is faulty and cruel.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta means that Judi Buenoano, 47, will outlive her death warrant, which expires at noon Monday.
But the legal debate over the state’s electric chair, which sent smoke and flames shooting from the head of Jesse Tafero in Florida’s last execution on May 4, will continue with death warrants pending against other inmates.
Buenoano’s attorneys pressed their position that the electric chair is faulty before a U.S. district judge, who lifted her stay late Friday after weighing claims that an electrocution would not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Buenoano is known as the “Black Widow” because she poisoned her husband, drowned her teen-age son and tried to murder a boyfriend with a car bomb.
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