Pedro Luis Medina (October 5, 1957 – March 25, 1997) was a Cuban refugee who was executed in Florida for the murder of a 52 year old woman in Orlando.

His victim, Dorothy James, an elementary school gym teacher, lived in an apartment next door and befriended Medina.

During his pretrial confinement, Medina exhibited signs of mental instability, including eating his own feces,[1] and was once placed on suicide watch.

Each determined that Medina met the statutory criteria for competence to stand trial, but was pretending to be insane.

His lawyers appealed, arguing that Medina was mentally ill based on psychiatric reports that suggested paranoid schizophrenia and had been incompetent at the time of his trial.

[4] The Florida Supreme Court ordered an evidentiary hearing to assess his sanity, and he was quickly deemed sane.

[6] In 1999, the state of Florida heard a petition from Thomas Harrison Provenzano, another death row inmate, that argued that the electric chair was a "cruel and unusual punishment".

The petition cited the executions of Medina, Jesse Tafero and Allen Lee Davis to show a pattern of inhumane deaths in the electric chair.

Belle Almojera, a medical examiner working for the prison, also signed an affidavit stating that he had seen "no evidence of pain and suffering" and that Medina "died a very quick, humane death".