Florida Set to Execute 'Fledgling Serial Killer' Who Lawyers Say Is Too Obese for Lethal Injection

A Florida death row inmate, who local authorities referred to as a “fledging serial killer,” is set to be executed tomorrow for the 2000 rape and murder of a newspaper employee — even as his lawyers say he is too obese for a lethal injection.

Michael Tanzi pleaded guilty on Jan. 31, 2003 and was convicted of first-degree murder after he assaulted, abducted, robbed and raped former Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta. He is set to be executed by lethal injection on April 8 at noon, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE. 

Tanzi’s attorneys have tried to halt the scheduled execution because they say his weight and health conditions could lead to a botched lethal injection. Florida courts have denied any appeals to Tanzi’s death sentence; his only hope lies with clemency from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed Tanzi’s death warrant, or an eleventh-hour intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lawyers for Tanzi, who is now 48, say he is morbidly obese and suffers from sciatica, a condition that causes pain on the back’s sciatic nerve, according to court documents. They say that the lethal injection procedure might not work because of his weight and would leave him “paralyzed but aware” during the process.

Tanzi is 6’3″ tall and weighed 383 lbs in the weeks before the death warrant was signed, his lawyers say.

The Florida Attorney General’s office said in a response to Tanzi’s legal team that they have not shown that the state’s lethal injection would violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the U.S. Constitution.

“Tanzi fails to offer any support for his groundless assertion that the massive dose of etomidate, that has been repeatedly and successfully used in Florida’s lethal injection protocol, will not work for him,” the state said.

On April 23, 2000, Tanzi approached Acosta while she was on her lunch break and asked her for a cigarette and the time, before punching her and forcing his way into her car, threatening to cut her “ear to ear” if she resisted.

He drove south and forced her to perform oral sex on him at a Texaco station, threatening to cut her with a razor, before trying her up in the back seat of his van. Eventually, he strangled Acosta to death at Sugarloaf Key and hid her body in a secluded place.

When Tanzi was apprehended a few days later, detectives said in an interview he admitted to killing her, stating, “If I had let her go I was gonna get caught quicker. I didn’t want to get caught. I was having too much fun.” 

Acosta had worked at the Miami Herald for nearly 25 years. She was a supervisor at the Herald’s paper make-up department. Former coworkers said she had a gentle, but firm hand as she dealt with editors, according to the Herald. 

Her colleagues felt something was off when she didn’t return from her lunch break, immediately contacting police, her bank, and others. Their efforts helped detectives arrest Tanzi two days later, the Herald wrote in an article about her. 

“It makes me want to cry… Janet was the nicest person you’d ever want to meet,” Carolyn Green, an employee at the Herald said. “I knew something was wrong when she didn’t come back. But for God’s sake I didn’t know this would be it.”

Tanzi will be the 11th person in the United States this year to be executed and the 3rd person in Florida.