Raiford

Anti-death penalty advocates gathered at Florida State Prison in Raiford to protest the execution of Michael King on Tuesday.

Billy Leon Kearse, convicted of killing Officer Danny Parrish of the Fort Pierce Police Department in 1991, was executed on Tuesday, the state’s third execution of the year.

A man convicted of killing a police officer 35 years ago was executed Tuesday, making him Florida’s third execution of the year. Billy Leon Kearse was 18 years old when he shot a Southeast Florida police officer, hitting him 13 times before fleeing.

Melvin Trotter’s execution by lethal injection on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. Trotter was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1987 for strangling and stabbing Virgie Langford a year earlier in Palmetto. (Libby Clifton/WUFT)

Florida carried out its second execution on Tuesday at 6:15 p.m. A group of 50 people held a vigil outside the Florida State Prison, where Melvin Trotter, 65, was put to death by lethal injection.

Florida executed its first prisoner of 2026 Tuesday evening, a man twice convicted in separate murders 12 years apart and who stabbed a robbery victim in the neck with a hunting knife while his brother shot the man three times.

James D. Ford, who was convicted of murdering a young couple in 1999 in southwest Florida while their toddler looked on, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison on Thursday and pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. Around 25 people witnessed the execution and Ford had no final statement, according to The Associated Press.

About 30 years have passed since Loran was found guilty of both first-degree murder and sexual battery.

A Florida inmate on death row for the murder of a 13-year-old Panama City girl is asking for a new sentence, after accepting the death penalty and forgoing a trial by jury as a promise to the victim’s now deceased mother.

Zack, 54, died by lethal injection at 6:14 p.m. Tuesday at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida, just north of Gainesville.