---
title: 'Florida Executes Jesse Guardado Amid “Deeply Troubling” Attempts to Change Expiration Dates on Lethal Injection Drugs'
description: 'Jesse Guardado was executed on November 5, 2026, but ahead of his execution, a federal appellate judge found it “deeply troubling” that the Florida…'
canonical: 'https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/florida-executes-jesse-guardado-amid-deeply-troubling-attempts-to-change-expiration-dates-on-lethal-injection-drugs'
section: news
date: '2026-11-09T00:00:00-05:00'
updated: '2026-11-09T13:10:17-05:00'
source: 'Death Penalty Information Center'
---

Jesse Guardado was executed on November 5, 2026, but ahead of his execution, a federal appellate judge found it “deeply troubling” that the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) used white-out to change the expiration date of drugs used in lethal injection executions. In September 2026, Mr. Guardado’s legal team filed a suit against the state questioning whether the DOC has been using expired drugs in its executions. Governor Ron DeSantis signed an execution warrant for Mr. Guardado a week after that lawsuit was filed, and all requests for a stay of execution were denied.

According to reporting from *The Florida Trib*, Florida DOC has faced allegations of using expired drugs in at least 35 of the 38 executions carried out since February 2025. In February 2026, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) [noted](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JZLlG9kP2c2sMhXjvIRInxe7Mh9b73KD/view) the state “has repeatedly deviated from its lethal injection protocol—including using expired drugs, preparing incorrect and incomplete dosages, administering drugs not authorized by its own protocol, and failing to contemporaneously document what drugs were used, in what quantities, and when.”

Ahead of Mr. Guardado’s scheduled execution, on October 22, 2026, an evidentiary hearing was held during which the state claimed under oath it has never used expired lethal injection drugs during its executions. The DOC maintained the drug log was incorrect because the employee responsible for updating it does not speak English as a first language and did not understand what needed to be entered. DOC officials stated that white-out was used to correct his misunderstanding of what information was to be entered. DOC record logs, submitted as part of Mr. Guardado’s lawsuit, showed that DOC officials changed drug expiration drugs from 1/31/2025 to 1/31/2027, but did not note when or why the date was changed.

During the same hearing, DOC Bureau Chief of Pharmaceutical Services Dr. Renea Marcano told the court that the employee did not know to enter the expiration date and instead entered the current year. On the stand, Dr. Marcano acknowledged the DOC’s expiration date discrepancies and more general date discrepancies. In a federal appeal filed by Mr. Guardado’s legal team, his counsel wrote that Dr. Marcano “did not explain why a person who misunderstood years due to a language barrier would be employed there or why this error was not caught by any other person previously.”

Although Mr. Guardado’s federal appeal was denied, 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jill Pryor excoriated the DOC for its practices. “The State’s failure to maintain accurate records will invariably lead to concerns and questions about whether the State is adhering to its protocol as well as the efficacy and constitutionality of that protocol,” she wrote in a separate concurrence. Judge Pryor added, “\[e\]ven more concerning is Florida’s response once it learned during litigation about the errors in its drug log...When the Department realized that its logs contained inaccurate information about drug expiration dates, its solution was to use (white-out) liquid eraser to alter the logs.”

Judge Pryor noted that while the appellate court dismissed Mr. Guardado’s appeal, the court’s decision “should not in any way signal or suggest that we condone the Department of Corrections’ failure to meet its basic responsibility to maintain accurate records.”

[Mr. Guardado’s execution](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/three-executions-on-november-5-highlight-concerns-about-fairness-and-constitutionality-of-death-sentences) on November 5 marked at least the 11th execution of a survivor of the Dozier School for Boys, a state-run reform school that concealed rampant physical and sexual abuse, neglect, and even murder. As a teenager in the 1970s, Mr. Guardado was sent to Dozier where he faced continuing “neglect, sexual abuse, and exposure to drugs that developed into severe addiction,” [according](https://www.fadp.org/jesse-guardado-overview/) to FADP. During his time at Dozier, it was common practice at the school for guards to force the teens to fight one another and bet on the outcomes. Mr. Guardado was forced to work in the school’s slaughterhouse and was beaten while shackled and raped by a guard.

Upon leaving Dozier, Mr. Guardado’s addiction worsened and in 2004, he robbed and killed a friend during a two-week crack cocaine binge. He confessed, cooperated with police, and pled guilty; however, his jury never heard about his childhood trauma nor his experiences at Dozier. *The Marshall Project* [reported in 2025](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/07/14/florida-death-row-teens-abuse) that Mr. Guardado is one of at least 34 boys sent to Dozier who ended up on Florida’s death row.

Nichole Manna, [Federal judge admonishes Florida for whiting out execution drugs’ expiration date](https://floridatrib.org/2026/11/05/federal-judge-admonishes-florida-for-whiting-out-execution-drugs-expiration-date/); The Florida Trib, November 15, 2026.