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A man convicted of the 1979 killing of a six-year-old girl who was abducted from her bedroom was put to death Thursday evening in a record 16th execution in Florida this year.
Bryan Frederick Jennings, 66, was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. ET following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Jennings drew the death penalty for the murder of Rebecca Kunash, who was raped and drowned in a canal.
When asked if he had a final statement, Jennings said “No” loudly.
No members of the victim’s family spoke to the media after the execution, and Department of Corrections spokesman Jordan Kirkland said the procedure went as planned.
“The execution took place without incident,” he said. “There were no complications.”
With Jennings’s death, a total of 42 people have undergone court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. That total is the highest since 2012, and a significant increase from just four years ago, when there were 11 executions nationally, continuing what had been a protracted decline from a record 98 executions in 1999.
The 42 executions have been carried out across a total of 11 states, all in the South or Midwest. President Donald Trump has pledged to resume executions for federal death row inmates, though none have been carried out in 2025.
Convicted in 3 trials
The amount of time Jennings spent on death row before executions rivals some of the longest spans seen in the U.S. The average time spent on death row has ranged between 20 and 24 years in recent times, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Jennings was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1980, but as with a subsequent conviction, it was reversed on appeal. His third and final trial in 1986 resulted in a third death sentence.
He also drew life sentences for kidnapping, sexual assault and burglary convictions.
Jennings had filed numerous state and federal court appeals, most recently contending an alleged violation of his right to counsel, after his lawyer died in 2022.
According to local Florida media reports, Jennings has also outlived two of the prosecutors who sentenced him to death, Kunash’s father and four state governors elected after his first trial.
Jennings was scheduled to be executed in October 1989, but the night before, he was among four death row inmates granted a stay by the Florida Supreme Court.
Since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1976 paved the way for the reinstatement of capital punishment, Florida has carried out 122 executions. Over 250 people are considered to be on death row in the state.
Florida had never carried out more than eight executions in any calendar year before 2025.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has explained the unprecedented number of executions by saying his goal is to bring justice to victims’ families who have waited decades for the death sentences to be carried out.
“Some of these crimes were committed in the ’80s,” the governor said at a recent news conference. “Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to [victims’ families] to make sure this ran very smoothly. If I honestly thought someone was innocent, I would not pull the trigger.”
2 more executions scheduled this year
Florida executions are all conducted via lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
Court records show Jennings was a 20-year-old on leave from the Marine Corps on May 11, 1979, when he removed the screen from the girl’s bedroom window while her parents were in another room.
Jennings abducted the girl, raped her, then physically assaulted her. The girl was then drowned in the canal, where her body was found later that day.
Arrested hours later on a traffic warrant, Jennings matched the description of a man seen near the Kunash home when the girl disappeared. Shoe prints found at the home matched those Jennings was wearing, his fingerprints were found on the girl’s windowsill, and his clothes and hair were wet, court records stated.
Additional Florida executions are scheduled on Nov. 20 for Richard Barry Randolph and on Dec. 9 for Mark Allen Geralds, which if carried out would bring the year’s total to 18 people so far this year.
A veterans’ advocacy group argued for leniency this week for former service members. Only 12 per cent of Florida’s death row inmates are veterans, the group said, but seven of this year’s 18 executed, or scheduled for execution, spent time in the U.S. military.
