Florida executes Edward Thomas James in 2nd execution of the day in the US, 4th this week

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A Florida death row inmate became the second man to be executed in the U.S. today and the fourth this week.

Edward Thomas James, 63, was executed by lethal injection on Thursday for the brutal 1993 murders of 58-year-old Elizabeth "Betty" Dick and her 8-year-old granddaughter, Toni Neuner, who was raped.

James died roughly nine hours after Wendell Arden Grissom's execution in Oklahoma for a home-invasion murder. It also comes two days after Louisiana executed Jessie Hoffman by nitrogen gas on Tuesday and a day after Arizona put Aaron Gunches to death by lethal injection on Wednesday.

James is the second inmate to be executed in Florida this year and the 10th in the U.S.

"This defendant deserves no more mercy than that he showed his two victims," trial prosecutor Tom Hastings told jurors in 1995, according to an archived Associated Press story.

Although James has previously said he deserves to be executed, his attorneys have recently been fighting to save his life.

Here's what you need to know about James' execution.

What did Edward Thomas James do?

On the night of Sept. 20, 1993, Betty Dick was at home in the metro Orlando city of Casselberry with four of her grandchildren, who were between the ages of 2 and 10, when James arrived. He had been renting a room in Dick’s home for about six months and had known the family for years, according to archived news stories.

Drunk and high on crack and possibly LSD, James apparently snapped, grabbing a sleeping 8-year-old Toni Neuner, strangling and brutally raping her before he threw her lifeless body behind his bed. He told detectives that he remembered thinking, “Eddie, this ain’t no fun … I’ll get me a grown woman.”

He then went to Dick’s bedroom, where he admitted to bludgeoning her, attempting to rape her and then stabbing her 23 times before fleeing the state with her purse, jewelry and car − setting off a frantic manhunt.

James confessed to the crimes after he was recognized on the "America's Most Wanted" television show and captured in California following a 17-day manhunt. He has always acknowledged his guilt and has even said he deserves the death penalty.

"I don't want to die but I do believe it's the proper penalty for what I committed," he said in court in 2003, according to an archived story in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. "From now until the time they execute me, I'm just going to exist, come as close to peace with what I did ... I feel in my heart that I'm doing the right thing."

Who were Betty Dick and Toni Neuner?

Betty Dick's children told the Orlando Sentinel that their mother took James in out of the goodness of her heart and that no one in the family would have ever suspected him capable of murder.

That was just who Dick was: a loving grandmother always looking out for others, they said, adding that it was a struggle for her other grandchildren to understand what happened to her and Toni, described by her aunt as an outgoing girl who was inseparable from her older sister Wendi, who was in the home the night of the murders and tried to intervene before James tied her up.

“She’s got a lot of anger inside of her,” her aunt, Brenda Teed, told the newspaper. “It’s unbelievable what she watched happen. She thinks if she could have gotten up sooner, she could’ve saved them.”

She said that the family told Dick's other grandchildren that "Grandma and Toni are in heaven, but they don’t understand why.”

“We tell them they can go outside and wave at the stars and they’ll be waving at Grandma," she told the Sentinel.

As for James, she told the newspaper that they just wanted to understand why he did what he did.

“I’m angry as hell. I’m having a hard time believing in God,” Teed said. “We have to live with the images the rest of our lives of what he did to them."

When and where was James executed?

James was executed just after 8 p.m. ET at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, about 40 miles west of Jacksonville. There was a roughly two-hour delay in the execution, which prison officials didn't immediately explain.

What did James' attorneys argue to try to save him?

James' attorneys have been arguing that he wasn't fit for execution because he experienced significant cognitive decline in recent years, to the point that he couldn't remember simple words and lost track of conversations.

In a recent court filing, his attorneys said that James pleaded guilty to the murders "despite a glaring lack of memory of the crimes," adding that he suffered from "a nearly lifelong history of substance abuse, clear signs of mental illness, and memory impairment including indicators of early-onset dementia."

His condition means that his execution amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, which is a violation of his constitutional rights, his attorneys have argued.

James was a native of Pennsylvania who left his stepfather during his teens to live with his mother in Casselberry near Orlando, where he claimed to have blackouts and got into fights. He dropped out of high school to join the Army but was soon discharged for "failure to conform."

All courts have rejected those arguments in the weeks and days leading up to the execution.

Are there anymore upcoming executions?

Yes, four executions are scheduled in the U.S. in April: Florida is set to execute Michael Tanzi on April 8, South Carolina is set to execute Mikal Mahdi on April 11, Texas plans to execute Moises Sandoval Mendoza on April 23, and James Osgood is set to be executed in Alabama on April 24.

All are set to be executed by lethal injection except Mahdi, who has until next week to choose between lethal injection, the firing squad or the electric chair.

Another eight executions are scheduled for the rest of the year but those will surely go up as states issue more death warrants.

Contributing: C. A. Bridges, Paste BN Network