Marlys Sather came home for lunch in 1990 and a man beat her, bound her, and burned her alive.
The New York Times just spent 5,000 words mourning his execution.
Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant – and you won't believe what the Times called it.
The Times Finally Found Religion
The piece – a collaboration between the Times and the left-funded nonprofit ProPublica – opens with a Catholic priest losing sleep over death row inmates.
No kidding.
The Times, which has never met a faith-based argument it didn't mock, discovered deep religious feeling when it could be weaponized against a Republican governor.
The priest's emotional anguish fills the opening paragraphs.
https://twitter.com/TheOfficerTatum/status/2039726498626641955?s=20
Marlys Sather's name – the 56-year-old who walked through her own front door in Palm Bay and paid for it with her life – gets one sentence before the article moves on to worry about the pace of executions.
What DeSantis Actually Did
Florida executed 19 convicted murderers in 2025 – the most in a single year since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s.
DeSantis explained exactly why at a Jacksonville press conference last November.
"Some of these crimes were committed in the '80s," he said. "Justice delayed is justice denied."
He talked about meeting victims' families after executions were carried out.
"Sometimes they'll come to the office after and you can just see, after decades, the weight that's kind of been lifted," he said.
The men DeSantis executed had sat on death row for an average of 31 years.
Bryan Jennings waited the longest – sentenced in 1979 for the kidnapping, assault, and murder of a 6-year-old girl in Brevard County, he spent 45 years on death row before Florida carried out the sentence.
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The Times is deeply troubled that Florida wouldn't wait any longer.
The Hit Piece Framework
The New York Times has called for abolishing the death penalty outright since at least 2011, when its editorial board declared it "grotesque and immoral."
ProPublica – the left-funded nonprofit behind this collaboration – is bankrolled by Herbert Sandler, a major Clinton donor whose foundation has directed millions toward ACLU causes.
These are not neutral observers analyzing Florida's justice system.
These are activists who object to the death penalty on principle, assigned to write a takedown of a Republican governor who carried out sentences that juries handed down decades ago.
The article speculates about DeSantis's 2028 presidential ambitions.
It quotes the editorial boards of the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun Sentinel suggesting the executions are a political stunt.
It does not prominently feature the families who came to DeSantis's office afterward – the ones he described as visibly relieved after three decades of waiting.
The Spokesman Got It Right
When the Times reached out to DeSantis's office for comment, communications director Alex Lanfranconi sent one sentence back.
"My advice to those who are seeking to avoid the death penalty in Florida would be to not murder people," he said.
https://twitter.com/Viralvid_89/status/2059309425920479502?s=20
That's the entire conservative argument – buried in a 5,000-word emotional spiral about a priest's sleep schedule.
Florida's response to a national outlet demanding the governor justify executing the man who burned Marlys Sather alive was four words: don't murder people.
What the Left Calls a Crisis
The Times frames DeSantis as an outlier running a death machine while the rest of America has moved on.
Florida's 19 executions in 2025 pushed the national total to 47 – the highest since 2009.
The men DeSantis executed weren't hauled out of compromised trials and rushed to the chamber.
They were convicted by juries, confirmed through decades of state and federal appeals, and executed after their victims' families waited longer for justice than most people wait for anything.
The New York Times wrote 5,000 words about a priest's heart racing in the dark.
DeSantis signed the warrants and gave those families what courts promised them more than 30 years ago.
Sources:
- Clay Waters, "NY Times Issues 5,000-Word Hit Piece on Death-Dealing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis," NewsBusters, July 6, 2026.
- Pamela Colloff, "Capital Punishment Is on the Decline. Except in Ron DeSantis's Florida," The New York Times Magazine / ProPublica, July 2026.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis, Jacksonville press conference, November 3, 2025.
- "Florida executes record 19 inmates in 2025 under Gov. Ron DeSantis," Corrections1, December 23, 2025.
