More than three and a half decades after a brutal crime that shocked a Brevard County community, the State of Florida has executed 58-year-old Chadwick Scott Willacy. He was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday, April 21, at Florida State Prison, following a lethal injection.
The execution proceeded after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in the final hours, rejecting a last-ditch appeal regarding the secrecy of Florida’s execution protocols.
The execution brings a close to the case of Marlys Mae Sather, a 56-year-old grandmother who had only recently lost her husband to cancer at the time of her death. On September 5, 1990, Sather returned to her home during a lunch break to find Willacy, her neighbor, burglarizing her residence.
Court records detail a harrowing scene: Willacy bludgeoned and strangled Sather before binding her and dousing her in gasoline. He then set her on fire while she was still alive. An autopsy later confirmed the cause of death was smoke inhalation.
Willacy was first sentenced to death in 1991 and, following a court-ordered resentencing, received the death penalty again in 1995.
READ: Appeal Filed As Execution Date Nears For James E. Hitchcock In 1976 Florida Killing Of Step-Niece
Up until the afternoon of his execution, Willacy’s legal team fought to halt the sentence. His attorneys filed a series of petitions claiming that the state was “systemically” blocking access to public records concerning the lethal injection process. They argued that Florida’s protocol was shrouded in secrecy, making it impossible to determine if the state was violating its own execution standards.
The State of Florida, represented by the Attorney General’s office, hit back at these claims, labeling them “disfavored last-minute” tactics. Prosecutors argued that Willacy’s demands were a “fishing expedition” and that the family of Marlys Sather had a constitutional right to the finality of a judgment handed down decades ago.
Willacy’s death marks the fifth execution in Florida for 2026. The state has maintained an active death chamber recently, following a 2025 calendar year that saw a record 19 executions under the administration of Governor Ron DeSantis.
Despite the defense’s arguments that the “vehicle” for due process had broken down, the courts ultimately ruled that the state’s interest in enforcing the law outweighed the inmate’s request for further discovery.
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s silence on Tuesday afternoon, the state carried out the sentence, marking the final chapter in a case that spanned over 35 years.
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