Florida is set to carry out 18th execution this year and moving closer to tying record
The execution was the state’s 18th this year, and officials said Florida is nearing its single-year record as another death warrant remains set.
- On Tuesday, Florida is set to execute William Reaves, marking the 18th execution this year under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the 77-year-old scheduled to receive a three-drug injection at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke.
- Reaves was convicted of first-degree murder for the 1986 shooting of Indian River County Deputy Richard Raczkowski, who responded to a 911 call at a Vero Beach convenience store before the fatal confrontation.
- Defense attorneys argued jurors were never told the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs rated Reaves as 100% disabled by service-related post-traumatic stress disorder. The Florida Supreme Court rejected his final appeals last week.
- More than 100 veterans sent a letter on Monday asking DeSantis to stop the execution. All Florida executions use a three-drug lethal injection protocol, which the state court has previously upheld against challenges.
- Florida has carried out more than half of the 31 total U.S. executions this year, nearing last year's record of 19 executions. The next scheduled execution is Jesse Guardado on Nov. 5.
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187 Articles
William Reaves Jr. was executed with a lethal injection, four decades after shooting agent Richard Raczkowski
DeSantis Signs Another Death Warrant Hours After State Kills 46th Inmate on His Watch
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant Wednesday for Thomas Mitchell Overton, who in 1992 killed a Tavernier couple whose unborn child did not survive the attack. With another execution set for Nov. 5, the planned Nov. 19 execution of Overton, 70, would become the 20th conducted by the state this year, the most for a year since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.
Florida executes William Reaves Jr., 77, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD
Reaves execution encapsulates the barbarism of capital punishment in America: the execution of an elderly man, a combat veteran whose psychological injuries were never put before the jury, sentenced to death by a non-unanimous jury.
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