17^th Scheduled Execution of 2025 in Florida Raises Concerns Over Non-Unanimous Verdicts and Execution of Veterans

Richard ​“Malik” Randolph is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on November 20, 2025, for the 1988 mur­der of Minnie Ruth McCollum. If car­ried out, Mr. Randolph’s exe­cu­tion will mark Florida’s 17^th exe­cu­tion of the year — more than dou­ble the pre­vi­ous record of eight exe­cu­tions in one year, and the sev­enth exe­cu­tion of a mil­i­tary vet­er­an by the state in 2025.

According to his lawyers, Mr. Randolph’s child­hood was marked by pro­found trau­ma: adopt­ed at five months old, he endured phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse at the hands of his adop­tive father, who beat him and locked him in clos­ets for days at a time. His adop­tive moth­er suf­fered from alco­holism and severe men­tal ill­ness. By age 10, Mr. Randolph was med­icat­ed for severe emo­tion­al dis­tur­bance. After grad­u­at­ing high school, Mr. Randolph enlist­ed in the U.S. Army, where he served hon­or­ably. The rigid mil­i­tary envi­ron­ment and emo­tion­al iso­la­tion of ser­vice pushed him deep­er into trau­ma respons­es, and accord­ing to post-con­vic­tion experts, Mr. Randolph began to self-med­icate with drugs and alco­hol to cope with his anx­i­ety and depres­sion. After his hon­or­able dis­charge from the Army, Mr. Randolph’s sub­stance abuse devel­oped into addiction.

Following his 1989 con­vic­tion, Mr. Randolph’s jury rec­om­mend­ed a sen­tence of death by a vote of 8 – 4. The tri­al court acknowl­edged that this nar­row mar­gin reflect­ed sig­nif­i­cant dis­agree­ment about the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment, and the jury heard from just one mit­i­ga­tion wit­ness. Had Mr. Randolph been sen­tenced to death years lat­er, his case may have qual­i­fied for sen­tenc­ing relief. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decid­ed Ring v. Arizona, hold­ing that juries, not judges, must find the facts nec­es­sary to impose death. Then in 2016, in Hurst v. Florida, the Court struck down Florida’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sen­tenc­ing scheme, which required a jury to make a sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion in which only a bare major­i­ty of jurors had to agree and the judge had final sen­tenc­ing deter­mi­na­tion after the advi­so­ry jury recommendation. 

The Florida Supreme Court sub­se­quent­ly ruled that death sen­tences must be unan­i­mous, but these pro­tec­tions came too late for Mr. Randolph, as they only allowed for relief for death sen­tences that became final after the high­est Court’s deci­sion in Ring. Mr. Randolph’s death sen­tence became final in 1990, so he was not enti­tled to relief, despite the Florida Supreme Court’s acknowl­edge­ment of the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences. In 2023, the Florida Legislature abrupt­ly reversed course and passed leg­is­la­tion autho­riz­ing juries to rec­om­mend non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences with a thresh­old of 8 – 4 in favor of a death sen­tence. Alabama is the only oth­er state that allows for non-unan­i­mous death sen­tenc­ing , how­ev­er its thresh­old is slight­ly high­er at 10 – 2. In 2025, DPI has iden­ti­fied at least six new death sen­tences in which juries hand­ed down non-unanimous decisions.

Like many oth­er vet­er­ans, Mr. Randolph’s jury did not hear about his hon­or­able mil­i­tary ser­vice, his child­hood trau­ma, or how these fac­tors inter­sect­ed with his sub­stance abuse. DPI’s November 2025 report, Forgotten Service, Lasting Wounds: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty, revealed that approx­i­mate­ly 200 mil­i­tary vet­er­ans cur­rent­ly await exe­cu­tion on death rows across the U.S. — com­pris­ing rough­ly 10% of the death row pop­u­la­tion. One in sev­en peo­ple exe­cut­ed since 1977 has been a mil­i­tary vet­er­an. Many vet­er­ans find them­selves in what experts call a ​“bat­tle­field-to-prison pipeline,” when ser­vice-relat­ed phys­i­cal injuries, men­tal health con­di­tions, trau­mat­ic brain injuries, PTSD, and sub­stance abuse dis­or­ders increase the like­li­hood of involve­ment with the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem. More than 40% of death-sen­tenced vet­er­ans strug­gled with addic­tion, com­pared to just 12% of the general public.

Florida is an out­lier when it comes to vet­er­ans and the death penal­ty. The state has sen­tenced at least 117 vet­er­ans to death, near­ly 15% of all vet­er­ans sen­tenced to death nation­al­ly and more than any oth­er state. In 2025 alone, Florida has already exe­cut­ed six vet­er­ans, and with Mr. Randolph, would exe­cute its sev­enth vet­er­an a lit­tle more than a week after Veterans Day. 

Ahead of his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, coun­sel for Mr. Randolph filed appeals chal­leng­ing the denial of pre­vi­ous motions where he raised con­sti­tu­tion­al con­cerns with Florida’s three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. Diagnosed with lupus, his attor­neys argued that the increased poten­tial risks posed by this con­di­tion con­sti­tute cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. The appeal also raised con­cerns with the state’s clemen­cy process and short war­rant peri­od that Florida offers between the sign­ing of a death war­rant and the exe­cu­tion. In these fil­ings, coun­sel for Mr. Randolph also alleged that his tri­al coun­sel con­ced­ed his guilt with­out con­sult­ing or dis­cussing the mat­ter with him. Ultimately, the Florida Supreme Court reject­ed all of Mr. Randolph’s argu­ments because of untime­li­ness and pro­ce­dur­al bars. Counsel has filed an appeal that remains pend­ing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.