The American Civil Liberties Union came under fire on social media Friday for insisting that Florida violated the right of convicted murderer and rapist Duane Owen to be "free from cruel and unusual punishment" by not providing him with "medically necessary gender-affirming care."
Owen was sentenced to death in 1986 after he was convicted of murdering a 14-year-old babysitter and a mother of two using a knife and a hammer, respectively. After murdering his victims, Owens raped their corpses.
Owen had a history of trying to leverage the legal system to avoid execution. The murderer initially pleaded insanity, but the state rejected his claim. Psychiatrists testified that Owen’s purported schizophrenia was an "act." When evaluated for dementia and gender dysphoria, illnesses Owen later claimed to have to avoid being executed, psychiatrists found no issues with his memory and said he didn’t show any signs of trying to present as a woman.
In response to Owen’s Friday execution, the ACLU called on Florida to "end the racist, unfair and cruel death penalty."
Christina Pushaw, a member of Ron DeSantis's (R., Fla.) communications team, pointed out that Owen "wanted to be housed in a women’s prison" likely "because as a violent rapist he wanted to be around more potential victims in a captive space." Pushaw’s tweet garnered more than five times as many likes as the ACLU’s at the time of writing.
The organization was also served with a Twitter "Community Notes" fact check providing context about the nature of Owen’s crimes.
The ACLU has previously downplayed the severity of crimes committed by death row inmates. In 2020, the organization condemned the execution of Brandon Bernard, a man who kidnapped two youth pastors and set them on fire in the trunk of their car, saying people deserve forgiveness for "mistakes made when they were teenagers."