American Vietnam War veteran executed for murder (1947–1986)
David Livingston Funchess (March 16, 1947 – April 22, 1986) was an American war veteran and convicted murderer who was executed by the state of Florida. Funchess was convicted of and sentenced to death for the 1974 murders of 52-year-old Anna Waldrop and 56-year-old Clayton Keaton Ragan during a robbery of his former workplace. Funchess also severely injured 62-year-old Bertha McLeod, who died of her injuries in 1977; however, Funchess never went to trial or received a conviction in McLeod's murder. He was sentenced to death in 1975 – and resentenced to death in 1979 – for Waldrop and Ragan's murders.
Funchess's case gained significant press coverage and controversy due to the fact that he was a Vietnam War veteran who was diagnosed with an extreme case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of his service. At the time of the murders, the disorder was not fully recognized; the American Psychiatric Association added PTSD to the third edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM-III) in 1980, several years after Funchess was sentenced to death. Funchess was diagnosed with the disorder in 1982. Courts and Florida Governor Bob Graham repeatedly denied Funchess's clemency requests due to him and his legal team not having brought up PTSD as a mitigating factor at the time of his 1975 trial. These decisions prompted criticism from Funchess's defense attorneys, war veterans, and anti-death penalty activists, who argued that his PTSD diminished his culpability in the murders and that his sacrifice on behalf of the country's military should have earned him clemency, and that Funchess could not have brought up PTSD during his trial as it was not recognized in the DSM-III at the time. Funchess's execution made him the first Vietnam War veteran diagnosed with PTSD to be executed by a U.S. state.
Early life and Vietnam War.
Funchess was born on March 16, 1947, in Jacksonville, Florida, to Alice and Venis (or Wenis) Funchess, the latter of whom operated tractors for a fertilizer plant. David Funchess had at least two older siblings, Mary and Willie J. Funchess; Willie was 2 years old at the time of David Funchess's birth. Overall, he had at least two sisters and four brothers.
Funchess's appellate team, consisting of attorneys and anti-death penalty activists including Mark Olive, Michael Mello, and Scharlette Holdman, gathered statements from people who knew Funchess before he served in the Vietnam War, including multiple close childhood friends, a Baptist minister who had attended middle school with Funchess, and a high school biology teacher, all of whom described Funchess as "a quiet, intelligent, and caring person who was in no way headed toward a life of crime," who had never used illicit drugs prior to his service. The appellate team also revealed that Funchess was a victim of child abuse who grew up in poverty during the Jim Crow era in Florida; his sister Mary told his appellate team, "When most children got spankings when they misbehaved, we got "killings." We would have been glad to have been hit with just a hand or a belt, but it was usually with fists, sticks, extension cords or a piece of water hose. Often we didn't even know why we were being hit."
In 1965, Funchess graduated near the top of his class in high school. In 1967, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps; that summer, he and his unit, the 3rd Marine Division, were sent to serve in the Vietnam War, near the Laotian border, during one of the war's most intense periods of combat. At the time of his enlistment, Funchess had no criminal record.
Vietnam War experiences.
During Funchess's time in Vietnam, he was exposed to Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide, defoliant, and chemical agent linked to physical and neurological problems in veterans and their offspring. While on death row, Funchess told his sister that he had very few memories of his time in Vietnam but could remember watching a fellow Marine being decapitated by a missile, having his own body blown into the air by the force of a mortar explosion, and being ordered to shoot a pajama-clad elderly man who was too physically disabled to escape: ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;"He would describe women, children, and wrinkled old men, all harmless people that he was told to kill because they were 'the enemy.' He told me about one old man who had pajamas. He could hardly walk, much less run. He was totally harmless. He couldn't have done anything to anyone, but David had to shoot him down in cold blood."Two and a half months into his service, Funchess received severe injuries to his ankle and leg from stepping on a land mine. A medical report described that he was medically evacuated to a naval hospital in Japan for three months and subsequently sent to a naval hospital in Virginia, where he was housed in a psychiatric ward with a diagnosis of "Psychoneurotic Depressive Reaction," a precursor to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Sometime during Funchess's service, one of his brothers was murdered. He was given leave to attend his brother's funeral, but he did not return to duty at the scheduled time, causing him to be briefly listed as absent without leave (AWOL). This designation was lifted after he returned to combat. Following his hospital stay in Virginia, Funchess was again required to report back to active duty in January 1968, but he did not, leading to him again being listed as AWOL. His second designation as AWOL led to his dishonorable discharge, precluding him from receiving benefits from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. However, he received a Purple Heart due to his wounds. He also received the Vietnam Service Medal and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal.
Post-war behavior.
After returning from the war, Funchess was put on pain medicine to cope with his injuries, which led to him developing a heroin addiction. Funchess's family members said that he underwent "strange" behavioral changes and that he would dig foxholes under his mother's house and sleep in them at night; he also began locking himself in his bedroom for multiple days at a time. Two of his sisters described his post-Vietnam temperament as "shellshocked." One sister, Queenie, described incidents wherein Funchess would "go blank" and become unresponsive for several minutes at a time in the middle of conversations, and that she would hear him crying in his room at night. He also disclosed to her that he had recurring nightmares involving the unarmed Vietnamese civilians whom he had been ordered to kill. At a press conference protesting Funchess's upcoming execution, Jeff Thompson, a Vietnam War veteran and lawyer who represented Funchess prior to his execution, said Funchess's behavior demonstrated that he, like many war veterans, could not readjust to civilian life. He also described Funchess's case of PTSD as "extreme."
In 1972, a man held Funchess at gunpoint. Funchess, who was unarmed, walked towards the man, unaffected. The man shot him several times in the stomach. Funchess survived the shooting. Witnesses to the crime believed Funchess exhibited a desire to die by suicide.
Around September 1973, Funchess was arrested for and convicted of breaching of the peace and grand larceny. On separate occasions, he was arrested for loitering, obstructing traffic, public intoxication, and other crimes, although whether or not he was convicted of any of those crimes is unclear. His family posited that his inability to keep a job, coupled with his drug addiction and trauma, led him to "[drift] into vagrancy and petty crime." He also started neglecting his hygiene, failing to bathe regularly or tend to his hair or clothes.
Murders.
Background.
Approximately a year prior to the murders, Funchess worked as a porter at the Avondale Liquor Store, a lounge in Jacksonville, Florida. He was fired after his employers suspected him of stealing $800 USD.
Anna Waldrop, who was 52 years old, had worked at the lounge for seven years at the time of the murders; 62-year-old Bertha McLeod had worked at the lounge for years as well and told a friend that she was considering retiring soon. She was on vacation, and the last day of her vacation was the Monday on which the murders were committed, but she decided to go to work that day. Clayton Ragan, who was 56 years old, was a customer at the lounge who was actually from Live Oak, Florida; he was visiting Jacksonville to see his children.
Crime.
Sometime before 9:15 am on Monday, December 16, 1974, Funchess entered the lounge and encountered Waldrop, McLeod, and Ragan. He beat and stabbed all three of them on various parts of their bodies; he also slashed all three of their throats. Police later found a bloodstained grapefruit knife, which they believed Funchess used to carry out the murders. He stole between $5,500 and $6,500 USD from the bar, mostly in canceled checks, before leaving.
When police arrived at the bar, they found Waldrop and McLeod behind the bar, lying "head to head" in a pool of blood. Police followed a trail of blood from a bar stool to the rear of the lounge where Ragan's body was located, leading police to surmise that he had tried to escape through a rear door when he collapsed.
Waldrop and Ragan were pronounced dead, while McLeod was barely alive. McLeod remained in the hospital in a coma before dying from her wounds more than two years after the attack, on July 10, 1977. Funchess never went to trial or received a conviction in McLeod's murder.
After the murders, Funchess shared some of the money from the robbery with two women he had met on the street minutes prior to the murders. He used some more of the money to take a cab and travel to Ocala, Florida.
Investigation.
Witnesses observed four men near the lounge on the morning of the murders; one of them, wearing work clothes, drove away from the scene in a station wagon, while the other three, one of whom had a brown package under his arm as he walked out of the lounge, departed in a sedan.
Police initially believed that the crime had to have been committed by more than one person. Initially, they stated that they were looking to question eight former Avondale Liquor Store employees for their potential knowledge of the murders. One of the men they said they were seeking was Funchess, although at the time, they did not confirm he was a suspect.
Funchess was arrested in Ocala approximately two months after the murders and returned to Jacksonville. At first, he claimed he could not remember what happened, but he eventually admitted his guilt in the murders. A psychiatrist induced Funchess into a state of narcosynthesis using a "truth serum" to get Funchess to confess that he had used heroin the morning of the murders before going to the bar.
Trial.
At trial, prosecutors referred to Funchess as an "animal." A court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Ernest Miller, described Funchess as a "sociopath" who was "dangerous to society."
The jury voted 10–2 in favor of recommending that Funchess be sentenced to death for the two murders of Waldrop and Ragan. Circuit Judge Gordon A. Duncan agreed with the jury's recommendation. In imposing Funchess's death sentence, Duncan called Funchess's crimes "some of the most senseless, heinous, and horrible murders that have ever taken place in Jacksonville." He called the murders "premeditated" and said, "The Defendant selected the place for a robbery and like a cobra, he carefully chose the time to strike while casually drinking a cup of coffee across the street from the scene of the crimes." He also acknowledged that McLeod was still in a persistent vegetative state.
Funchess was formally sentenced to death for Waldrop's and Ragan's murders on July 18, 1975. He was transferred to Florida's death row on July 29 to await execution.
Death row and appeals.
Death row.
During his time on death row, guards described him as a "model prisoner." He only received one disciplinary infraction during his eleven years on death row, for a one-time refusal to approach the front of his cell for a prisoner count. While on death row, Funchess wrote poetry as a distraction from his mental distress and became interested in religion.
Early appeals.
In December 1976, the Florida Supreme Court upheld Funchess's death sentence in a unanimous 7–0 vote. One justice, Arthur England, warned prosecutors