Norman Mearle Grim was executed by the state at 6:14 p.m. on Tuesday for the 1998 murder of his neighbor in East Milton near Pensacola.
He is the 15th person executed by Florida in 2025, the most by the state in any single year.
The 65-year-old waived his right to file any final appeals to stop his execution shortly after his death warrant was signed last month. He had no last words.
After he was found guilty during the original trial in 2000, Grim also refused to let his lawyers present any mitigating evidence to help him get sentenced to life in prison, rather than death.
The Florida Supreme Court said he wants to die, making this an unusual capital case. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, this happens in only about 10% of all executions.
“He wanted to be executed rather than spend the rest of his life in prison,” the court said.
Grim’s crime
Grim was charged with killing Cynthia Campbell, 41, a lawyer in East Milton. Grim had been convicted of several violent felonies in the 1980s and was on parole at the time of the crime.
On the morning of July 27, 1998, Campbell called police around 5 a.m. after a lugnut was thrown through her window. Grim came over from his home next door to check out the incident.
When police arrived, Grim was standing outside with Campbell, according to the court documents. Campbell went to Grim’s house for a cup of coffee after the police left.
Later that morning, an employee of Campbell’s stopped by her house before work. When they arrived around 7:20 a.m., her front door was open and the lights were on, but she was nowhere to be found.
Campbell was set to meet a new employee that day, but she didn’t show up. The new employee drove to her house after finding out she had been missing earlier that morning as well. When she got there, Campbell was still missing. The police showed up shortly after.
Grim told police she had come over earlier. He initially refused to let police search his house, but he eventually agreed, according to the court documents.
Later, more detectives came to Campbell’s house and spoke with Grim again. They noticed several small reddish-brown stains on his jean shorts and shoulder.
After asking the officers if he could go get his dogs, which were loose in the neighborhood, Grim drove away from his house with one of the detectives following behind in an unmarked car. The detective eventually lost track of him.
Later that day, a man fishing in the bay hooked a body wrapped in a sheet and garbage bags with masking tape, according to the court documents. The body was identified as Campbell’s.
Surveillance footage and multiple witnesses showed Grim near the bay’s fishing bridge that afternoon.
A piece of green carpet found with her body matched the type in Grim’s house, and his ex-wife identified the sheets used to wrap the body. Police issued an arrest warrant for Grim, who was missing at the time.
Campbell’s face and head had dozens of cuts and bruises, over eleven stab wounds in her chest and broken bones in her hands and arms. According to the court documents, she also had injuries from a sexual battery.
All the injuries were inflicted before she died.
A detective searched Grim’s house, finding blood in the house and Grim’s bloody fingerprints on a trash bag box. Outside, several other bloodied items were found.
Grim was arrested in Oklahoma a few days later wearing jean shorts with Campbell’s blood on them, and a blood stain was found in his car. All the blood stains found in his house and car matched Campbell’s, too.
Grim’s punishment
Grim was found guilty of first-degree murder and sexual battery by a jury in 2000. The case then moved onto the sentencing phase of the trial, where the court pursued the death penalty.
During this phase, the convicted person typically presents any mitigating circumstances that may explain the crime, but Grim refused to let his lawyers present any evidence. The jury unanimously recommended a sentence of death.
The court insisted special counsel find and present any mitigating evidence, even though this is not required by law. Grim had several psychological disorders, including antisocial personality disorder. However, he was on medication for most of his issues and was found to be sane during the murder.
Lawyers presented a few other pieces of evidence, including the fact he was going through a divorce at the time and was considered a good employee, according to the court documents.
The judge determined these circumstances did not outweigh the aggravating factors agreed upon by the jury and sentenced Grim to death.
Protestors gather together in prayer outside of the Florida State Prison in Raiford in opposition to the execution of Norman Mearle Grim. Grim was executed on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.
The day of the execution
For years, every time the state of Florida executes someone, the Our Lady of Lourdes church from Daytona Beach has shown up to the field across from the state prison in a contracted coach bus to protest.
Today was no different. They descended the stairs of the bus and unloaded lawn chairs, tarps, speakers and the church’s signature gong with anti-death penalty messages attached.
Standing with the church, attending their second execution, were Celinda Perry and Karen Jenkins from St. Mary’s, a town in Georgia.
“We have an obligation to say this isn’t right,” Perry said. “When we kill them, we become the murderers.”
The death penalty is always wrong, no matter the crime, she added.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty agrees.
Grim didn’t have a lawyer when his death warrant was signed last month, a situation FADP Executive Director Maria DeLiberato called a “complete failure” of the government. Death row inmates are supposed to have a lawyer from the moment they are arrested until they are executed, she said.
The fact that Grim expressed a preference to be executed doesn’t make the situation any better, she said, and in some ways, it is even worse.
“We, the people of the state of Florida, are helping a man commit state-assisted suicide tonight,” DeLiberato said in a speech to the protesters outside the prison. “And that is shameful.”
At almost every other execution, only one person stands on the other side of the lawn in support: Bill Campbell. But today, another woman, who Campbell said was from Pensacola, stood with him.
She wore a black jacket that appeared to have the letters DOC, the acronym for Department of Corrections, on it.
The woman did not identify herself.
“I’m here because they’re here. If they stopped coming, I would probably stop coming,” Bill Campbell said, referring to the protestors. “I hate to see people coming out here complaining.”
Two more executions have been scheduled for 2025: Bryan Jennings on Nov. 13 and Richard Barry Randolph on Nov. 20.
Contact Alexa Ryan at aryan@alligator.org. Follow her on X @AlexaRyan_.
Alexa is a second-year journalism and international studies students serving as the Fall 2025 Criminal Justice beat reporter. She previously served as a copy editor. She spends her free time running, traveling, having movie nights and going on random side quests with friends.
