Florida's execution pace again outpaces every other state

A record on track to be broken again

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the state’s 20th death warrant of the year on Oct. 5, according to WUFT News. That pace puts Florida ahead of the 19 executions it carried out in 2025, which was itself a state record. As of Oct. 20, Florida had carried out 18 executions in 2026, more than half of all executions nationwide this year. Texas, by comparison, had carried out seven.

For readers along the Nature Coast, the story is not about a single case tied to Levy County or Cedar Key. It is about a statewide process, run almost entirely through the governor’s office in Tallahassee, that now moves faster, and with less public explanation, than in any other state.

How Florida differs from other death-penalty states

Only five states carried out at least one execution in 2026: Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Alabama. Florida is one of just two states, per the report, that allow a jury to recommend a death sentence without a unanimous vote; state law requires only eight of 12 jurors to agree. That rule changed in 2023, after jurors in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting case did not unanimously support execution for the gunman who killed 17 people in 2018.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told WUFT that Florida’s biggest outlier trait is how inmates are chosen for execution at all. Under state law, DeSantis alone signs death warrants once an inmate has exhausted appeals and becomes eligible. Maher said the governor has not explained the criteria used to select which inmates are scheduled, calling the centralization of that authority “a tremendous departure” from past Florida practice.

Questions about drugs and protocol

That same opacity extends to execution procedure itself. The state changed its lethal-injection drug in 2017 but has not disclosed its supplier, a gap that advocacy group Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) says has fueled concerns about dosage errors. A March FADP press release cited Florida Department of Corrections records showing what it called “multiple deviations from the state’s written execution protocol” in 2025, including expired drugs, incomplete dosages and incomplete record-keeping. Florida courts have so far declined to grant stays of execution based on those claims, with the state calling the allegations speculative.

The stakes of botched protocol were underscored nationally on Sept. 30, when Tennessee’s attempted execution of Christa Pike failed twice by lethal injection. The Death Penalty Information Center puts the botched-execution rate for lethal injection at 7.2%, higher than other methods still in use.

The public debate, and a vigil in Raiford

Public opinion remains firmly in favor of capital punishment: a Pew Research poll from August found 66% of Americans support the death penalty for murder convictions, up six points since 2021. But opposition persists locally and statewide. At a vigil outside Florida State Prison in Raiford on Oct. 13, the day of James Robertson’s execution, a day after DeSantis signed Robertson’s warrant following Pike’s botched attempt in Tennessee, FADP legal and policy director Maria DeLiberato called the state’s pace “a disgusting record.”

Hilda Rausini, whose son faced a death sentence in California before his case was resolved, attended the same vigil. “I didn’t want to move here because I knew that Florida had the death penalty,” she said.

What it does, and does not, mean for this coast

Nothing in the current reporting ties a specific case to Levy County or Cedar Key. But the authority at issue, the governor’s unilateral warrant power, the state’s drug-sourcing secrecy, and the non-unanimous jury standard, applies equally to any capital case that could arise in this judicial circuit. There is no pending bill or rule change noted in the source material; the record pace continues under existing Florida Statutes governing death warrants and jury sentencing.