Waterhouse Execution: Expert Says Florida Gov.'s Decision is 'Secretive'

Three days before former Greenport resident and convicted murderer Robert Waterhouse is scheduled to die by lethal injection at a Florida prison, CBS Miami published a report saying that Florida Gov. Rick Scott would not talk in detail about the process that led him to pick Waterhouse over other death row inmates whose appeals have run their course.

The report includes interviews with a man who handled death row appeals for years in Florida, who said that the governor's execution selection process is "incredibly secretive." Another expert told CBS that Florida governors have rarely been forthcoming as to why they pick one inmate over others for execution.

Waterhouse, 65, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Feb. 15 at 6 p.m. Scott signed the order of execution — his first of the year — on Jan. 4. He was sentenced to life in 1967 for the 1966 rape-murder of 77-year-old Greenport resident Ella Carter. While out on lifetime parole in 1980, he raped and killed Deborah Kammerer in St. Petersburg, Fla., and was convicted of first-degree murder.

Waterhouse was denied a stay of execution by the Florida Supreme Court this past Wednesday and is now taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a report from the Miami Herald.

Read the latest report from CBS Miami here.