Florida is preparing Thursday to execute an Army veteran convicted in the 1998 shotgun killings of his girlfriend and three young children.
Jeffrey Hutchinson, 62, is set to receive a lethal injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke in what will be the fourth execution in the state so far this year.
Hutchinson has long claimed he is innocent, and that two unknown assailants perpetrated the killings as part of a U.S. government conspiracy aimed at silencing him over his activism on claims of Gulf War illnesses and other issues affecting veterans, according to the Associated Press. Hutchinson served eight years in the Army, part of it as an elite Ranger…