Michael Lee King, 54, was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison in Starke for the 2008 murder of a North Port woman that resulted in changes in state law regarding 911 operators.
King was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. by the state Department of Corrections. The announcement came several hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his latest application to stay the scheduled execution.
The execution was the fourth carried out this year by the state, which set a modern-era record with 19 in 2025.
The action from the U.S. Supreme Court followed the Florida Supreme Court denial of King’s motion for a stay for an evidentiary hearing on March 10.
According to the death warrant, King, a plumber, abducted Denise Amber Lee, 21, the mother of two, from her home on Jan. 17, 2008. Lee, the daughter of a Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office sergeant, was first taken to King’s home and raped.
An hour later King placed her in the backseat of his car as he drove to a cousin’s house to borrow a flashlight, shovel, and gas can. During the drive, Lee was able to get hold of King’s cell phone and call 911.
On a recording of the call, “Ms. Lee is heard crying and begging to be saved so that she could see her husband and children again,” the warrant states.
At least four people called 911, including one woman who followed King and gave 911 workers a detailed description of his location, but no officers were sent to help, according to reporting from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune at the time.
King later drove Lee to a remote area where he shot her in the face and buried her. He was convicted of kidnapping, sexual battery, and first-degree murder in 2009.
In 2010, Florida legislators approved the “Denise Amber Lee Act,” which in part required the Department of Health to establish criteria for the certification of 911 emergency dispatchers.
The law, signed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist, also required applicants for certification or recertification as a 911 emergency dispatchers to complete a training program at least 208 hours. They were also required to certify under oath that they were not addicted to alcohol or any controlled substances.
The Herald-Tribune reported that at the time 911 centers set their own training standards, “a practice that means some call takers train for months while others are directing emergency response just days after being hired.”
After the execution, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty issued a statement that praised Lee’s family members for their work to improve the 911 system and criticized the state for using “violence as its version of ‘justice’.” The group pointed to a brain injury King suffered at the age of six and claimed that while on death row King had transformed.
DeSantis has already lined up two more executions.
James Aren Duckett, 68, a former Mascotte police officer convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in 1987, is to be executed on March 31.
Chadwick Willacy, 58, is scheduled to be executed April 21 for the 1990 murder of his Palm Bay neighbor who found him burglarizing her home.
