Last year, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty “bore witness to an unprecedented number of executions, profound loss, and a system increasingly defined by speed rather than justice,” it notes in its annual report, “We the People: A Record of Florida’s Death Penalty in 2025.”
Nineteen people were killed by lethal injection in the State of Florida last year, a number that “well-exceeded the all-time record of 11 in 1942, and more than doubled the post-Furman record of 8 in 2014,” the report points out.
And Florida is already gearing up for more executions. This month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two death warrants, with both executions scheduled for February. Ronald Palmer Heath is scheduled to be executed on February 10 for the 1989 murder of Michael Sheridan. Two weeks later, on February 24, 65-year-old Melvin Trotter will be killed. And, as is all too often the case in any death sentence, and especially true in Florida, both death sentences are legally questionable.
Ronnie Heath’s death sentence is a miscarriage of justice, according to FADP. Ronnie and his brother, Kenneth, were both convicted of murder committed during a robbery. Ronnie refused to testify against his brother and was sentenced to death by a 10-2 jury recommendation. But Kenneth testified against Ronnie in a plea deal, giving him a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. Kenneth is now eligible for parole.
Melvin Trotter was sentenced to death for the June 16, 1986, robbery and murder of 70-year-old Virgie E. Langford, a Palmetto grocery store owner. Like Heath’s verdict, it was rendered by a non-unanimous jury, 9-3. In addition, Melvin has a below-average IQ and has a history of family and developmental problems. The state Supreme Court affirmed the judgment but remanded for resentencing. ()
It’s important to note that DeSantis’s enthusiasm for state killing is unfettered by the fact that Florida has the highest number of death row exonerations in the U.S. — 30 human beings sentenced to death, imprisoned, and finally exonerated and released based on evidence of their innocence — since 1973, according to the ACLU. And of those 30,19 were sentenced by non-unanimous juries, which allows a death sentence by a vote of only eight of 12 jurors. Florida and Alabama are the only two states that allow a non-unanimous jury to recommend a death sentence.