(Update: On Tuesday, a few hours after this article was posted, Gov. DeSantis signed another death warrant, this one for 59-year-old Curtis Windom, who is scheduled to be killed on August 28. If it proceeds, Windom’s will be the eleventh killing in Florida this year, outpacing the state’s previous record of eight executions in 2014, and more than any other state this year. Windom was sentenced to death in 1992 for killing three people.)
Florida executed Michael B. Bell last week, the state’s eighth killing this year, and the 26th execution in the United States so far.
But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t done yet. The state plans to kill Edward Zakrzewski at the end of this month, and Kayle Bates in mid-August, which, if carried out, means Florida will have killed ten people — twice as many people than any other state, and “the deadliest year of executions in Florida’s modern history,” Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty noted on its website. https://www.fadp.org/
It’s no surprise that Florida is leading the U.S. in executions. DeSantis has been steadily expanding the state’s death penalty statutes, since 2023, when he signed two bills, one eliminating the requirement for a unanimous jury vote for a death sentence to a majority vote of 12-4; the second to allow the death penalty to be imposed for the sexual assault of a minor, even if the victim doesn’t die. Those bills were followed by two more death penalty bills, both signed in May of this year. HB 903, allows the state to add additional execution methods to its protocol, which currently calls for execution by lethal injection or electrocution, and HB 693, adding an aggravating factor for sentencing for capital felonies if “the victim of the capital felony was gathered with one or more persons for a school activity, religious activity, or public government meeting.” And in January, DeSantis signed into law a bill requiring a mandatory death sentence for any undocumented immigrant convicted of a capital offense.
At least three of those bills could be legally challenged as unconstitutional, but DeSantis is openly banking on the right-wing Supreme Court denying any challenges.