Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the 20th death warrant of the year Oct. 5, putting the state on pace to break its record of 19 executions from 2025.
Previously, the record was eight.
The pace has renewed questions about the governor’s authority over executions, the transparency surrounding it and the morality of capital punishment itself.
This comes as the death penalty receives national attention following the botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, who survived two lethal injection attempts Sept. 30.
Supporters of the death penalty argue some crimes can only rightfully be punishable by death, while opponents say the process is cruel and ineffective.
The majority of Americans believe the former, with 66% supporting capital punishment for people convicted of murder, according to an August Pew Research poll.
Support for the practice has actually increased in recent years, with current support standing six percentage points higher than in 2021.
Despite that national support, less than half of the 50 states actively practice the death penalty, with even fewer scheduling executions.
In 2026, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Alabama were the only states that carried out at least one execution, with Florida accounting for over half of total executions across the country, with 18 as of Oct. 20.
Comparatively, Texas has carried out seven executions in 2026.
“Florida has been an outlier in the country last year and this year, both in terms of its enthusiasm to set executions and to pass legislation to expand the death penalty,” Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said.
How is Florida an outlier?
Florida is one of two states that allow a jury to recommend a death sentence without a unanimous vote. Under Florida law, at least eight of 12 jurors must recommend death.
The rule was changed in Florida in 2023 after Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, escaped the death penalty because three jurors voted against it.
Perhaps the biggest concern for Florida’s death penalty process, according to Maher, is the way inmates are selected for execution.
“One of the biggest concerns about Florida is the unprecedented centralization of authority in Gov. DeSantis to both select individuals for execution, to decide their clemency applications and to set their executions,” Maher said. “The last two years of executions have been a tremendous departure from historically what Florida officials have done in the death penalty, and all of that is attributable to just a single person, and that is Gov. DeSantis.”
DeSantis has the sole power to sign a death row inmate’s death warrant, given they have exhausted all their appeals and are eligible for execution.
DeSantis has refused to provide information about why and how he chooses who to execute, Maher added.
The lethal injection process
That secrecy extends to the protocols used during the executions, Maher said, with information about where the state gets the drugs from unavailable to the public.
The European Union, which is opposed to capital punishment, banned the export of drugs used for executions in 2011, and many drug suppliers abroad and in the U.S. followed suit in the years after.
As the drug shortage worsened, states turned to other methods of execution, like firing squads, sought alternative drugs or stopped executions altogether.
Florida changed the type of drug it used in 2017, but has not disclosed where it gets them from, which has led to transparency concerns, along with allegations of incorrect dosages and expired drugs being used to execute inmates.
“Records obtained from the Florida Department of Corrections show multiple deviations from the state’s written execution protocol during 2025 executions, including the use of expired drugs, incomplete dosages, and poor record keeping,” a Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty March press release said.
This allegation was used to argue for stays of execution over several months in late 2025 and early 2026.
However, the state argued the claims were speculative and denied the requests for stays of execution.
“Florida officials maintain the same kind of secrecy around executions and decision-making as did officials in Tennessee,” Maher said, adding that these factors led to the botched execution of Christa Pike.
In fact, lethal injection as a whole has a much higher chance of being botched than other execution methods, with a 7.2% botched execution rate, according to the DPIC.
Against the death penalty
The day after Pike’s scheduled execution, DeSantis signed James Robertson’s death warrant in a move FADP legal and policy director Maria DeLiberato said was disgusting during a speech at a vigil outside the state prison during his execution Oct. 13.
“It doesn’t stop crime, it doesn’t make people safer and it doesn’t bring healing,” she said about the death penalty. “It just brings more pain, more violence.”
She said the pace of executions in Florida is concerning.
“It’s a disgusting record, it’s a disgusting pace and history will tell the truth that they are on the wrong side of it,” she said. “I am absolutely confident of that.”
Hilda Rausini agrees with that sentiment, sharing a personal connection to death row.
“I didn’t want to move here because I knew that Florida had the death penalty, and my son at the time was in prison facing the death penalty in California,” she said. “But then, through a miracle, God saved him.”
Her son, Walter “Pierre” Rausini, was convicted in 2000 of ordering the deaths of two people. He escaped the death penalty, and instead received 40 years in prison. He was released in 2024.
She said when she came to Florida in 2008, and found out about the vigils outside the state prison to protest executions, she knew she had to participate.
“I know how devastating it is for the whole family,” she said about executions. “It wouldn’t just kill my son; it would kill all of us, so I sympathize with the victims and the families.”
For the death penalty
Bill Campbell travels from Marion County to the state prison in Raiford for every execution to show his support for the death penalty and counteract the anti-death penalty protestors. He said he is happy with the pace of executions in Florida, but still thinks executions are a non-event and should be regarded as such.
“Call it a record if you want, but it is insignificant. This is a non-event,” he said while standing outside the prison Oct. 13. “The only reason this thing is considered an event is because these protesters have decided to come here for a photo-op.”
He said if the record was 200, then maybe that would be a significant event, but the prison is packed with people on death row, and he thinks they should be executed more quickly.
Other supporters of the death penalty say the harshest crimes deserve the harshest punishments, with the families of the executed prisoners’ victims often speaking about their family members and how their murders have impacted them at press briefings following executions.
Rebecca Hart spoke about her father’s murder at the hands of James Robertson following his execution Oct. 13.
“There’s no amount of time that can make losing your father something you simply get over,” she said. “When someone you love is taken from you in such a violent way, the world keeps moving, even when a part of yours feels like it’s stopped.”
She said Robertson’s execution won’t bring her father back, but she still needed to attend the execution to honor him.
“His life mattered before his murder, and it still matters now,” she said. “I need to honor him, to speak his name and to make sure that the man at the center of the story is not forgotten. His name is Frank Richard Hart.”
