Florida's First Lethal Injection

Terry Melvin Sims, 58, has become the first man in Florida history to die by lethal injection.

He was put to death just over a month after Florida changed its law to give condemned prisoners the choice between lethal drugs or the electric chair.

A witness says Sims died proclaiming his innocence.

Sims was sentenced to death for killing an off-duty sheriff's deputy in 1977 during a drugstore robbery in the central Florida town of Longwood.

The Florida Legislature, at a special session Jan. 14, approved giving death row inmates the option of choosing injection over the electric chair. Thirty-four other states execute inmates by injection.

Florida stopped executions after the July 8, 1999, electrocution of Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis. Blood poured from Davis' nose, making a plate-sized stain on his white shirt.

Davis' execution prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to agree to hear a case challenging Florida's use of the electric chair. After the state law was changed to allow injection, the high court backed out of deciding whether the chair was cruel and unusual punishment.

Sims, who unsuccessfully challenged the constitutionality of the electric chair, last week lost a bid attacking the method of lethal injection. Late Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta denied his appeals.

He was convicted of shooting 55-year-old George Pfeil, a retired New York City police officer and volunteer Seminole County deputy sheriff. Pfeil was off-duty when he stopped to pick up a prescription for his wife at a pharmacy being held up by Sims and an accomplice.

When Sims spotted Pfeil's uniform, he opened fire. The fatally wounded deputy fired and hit Sims in the hip. Sims was not arrested until June 1978 after an attempted robbery in California.