Louis Gaskin, also known as the “Ninja Killer,” was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday afternoon in Florida for the 1989 murder of a New Jersey couple.
Gaskin, 56, broke into a New Jersey couple’s winter home in Flagler County, Florida, on December 20, 1989, before shooting and killing the homeowners, Robert and Georgette Sturmfels. Deputies say that Gaskin got his nickname because he wore all-black clothing during that crime, per WFAA.
Gaskin proceeded to rob the house after he shot the two victims, and he later gifted the items he stole to his girlfriend’s cousin, Alfonso Golden, as Christmas presents, per Courthouse News Service. The stolen items included a videocassette recorder, two clocks, and a lamp.
After discovering where the items were obtained, Golden reported them to the police, and Gaskin was arrested, per Courthouse News Service. Following his arrest, Gaskin admitted to the crimes and told a psychologist that he knew exactly what he was doing when he committed the crime.
“The guilt was always there,” Gaskin told a psychologist, per Newsweek. “The devil had more of a hold than God did. I knew that I was wrong. I wasn’t insane.”
In 1990, jurors recommended the death sentence for Gaskin in an 8-4 vote.
Current Florida law requires a unanimous vote for a death sentence. Consequently, Gaskin’s lawyers filed multiple appeals in an attempt to overturn his death sentence.
Eric Pinkard, an attorney at the Law Office of the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel representing Gaskin, said that a trial today would yield different results that would not qualify Gaskin for the death penalty.
“Mr. Gaskin would not receive a sentence of death today because his extensive mitigation would place him outside of the class of individuals who may receive it and it would be clear that both mental health statutory mitigators apply,” wrote Pinkard in an emergency application to the Supreme Court. “This weighty mitigation would have made it clear that Mr. Gaskin is not the worst of the worst, and that this case is not the most aggravated and least mitigated. In other words, if Mr. Gaskin were tried today, he would not receive a majority death recommendation.”
The Supreme Court declined the emergency application, and Florida Associate Deputy Attorney General Carolyn Snurkowski wrote a brief explaining that Gaskin has no right to unlimited litigation.
“There is little doubt that every defendant believes they will suffer a ‘manifest injustice’ if their postconviction claim is deemed foreclosed by the passage of time. However, a defendant does not have an unlimited right to continue to litigate (and relitigate) the validity of their conviction, and such a limited right must be balanced against the State’s competing and substantial interest in the finality of judgment in criminal cases, which in this case is carrying out Gaskin’s death sentence,” wrote Snurkowski.
Gaskin is the 100th person in Florida who has had the death penalty conviction carried out since it was brought back in 1976, per WFAA. There are also 297 people currently waiting on Florida’s death row.