Florida’s Executions: Troubling Patterns of Secrecy and Inadequate Legal Representation

On July 31, 2025, the state of Florida exe­cut­ed its ninth per­son this year, Edward Zakrzewski, mark­ing the high­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions in a sin­gle year in Florida in mod­ern death penal­ty his­to­ry. The haste with which Governor DeSantis is sched­ul­ing exe­cu­tions has prompt­ed many ques­tions and addi­tion­al scruti­ny about a process that is cloaked in secre­cy and a deci­sion-mak­er who is untrou­bled by the seri­ous issues in many of the cas­es set for execution.

Executions of Prisoners with Inadequate Legal Representation 

Just two weeks before Mr. Zakrzewski’s exe­cu­tion, on July 15, 2025, Michael Bell was exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion. Ahead of Mr. Bell’s exe­cu­tion, his attor­neys raised sev­er­al con­cerns regard­ing wit­ness­es who tes­ti­fied against their client at tri­al — wit­ness­es who lat­er recant­ed and revealed they received favor­able treat­ment for tes­ti­fy­ing against Mr. Bell. However, at an evi­den­tiary hear­ing where coun­sel was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present this evi­dence, both wit­ness­es ​“invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrim­i­na­tion and refused to answer ques­tions about their recan­ta­tions as well as ques­tions about oth­er top­ics like police and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct in the case,” accord­ing to counsel’s motion for a stay of exe­cu­tion. Ultimately, the cir­cuit judge reject­ed the argu­ments of Mr. Bell’s coun­sel, allow­ing his exe­cu­tion to pro­ceed. Neither the Florida Supreme Court nor the U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed relief to Mr. Bell, but Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan not­ed they would have grant­ed his appli­ca­tion for a stay of execution.

Like sev­er­al oth­er pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed in Florida in 2025, Mr. Bell’s claims were nev­er heard by a fed­er­al court because of the incom­pe­tence of their appoint­ed lawyers. Under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers have one year from the date their death sen­tence becomes ​“final” to file a habeas appeal in fed­er­al court. But pris­on­ers must first file state appeals, and while these state-lev­el appeals are pend­ing, the one year fed­er­al clock is stopped or ​“tolled” until the state appeal is decid­ed. Shortly after Mr. Bell’s one-year clock began to run again, on April 8, 1998, he filed a request for an attor­ney in state court — but “[d]ue to changes in Florida’s col­lat­er­al-coun­sel appoint­ment sys­tem and a large back­log of inmates with­out appoint­ed coun­sel, Bell did not receive col­lat­er­al coun­sel until September 3, 1998.” That attor­ney with­drew the fol­low­ing month and was replaced by anoth­er attor­ney, who filed his fed­er­al court peti­tion 17 days after the one-year fed­er­al dead­line. Mr. Bell’s appeals were sub­se­quent­ly dis­missed and nev­er con­sid­ered — not because they did not have mer­it, but sim­ply because his attor­neys filed for habeas relief 17 days too late.

At least 57 death-sen­tenced men nation­wide have lost their chance for fed­er­al court review of their claims because their attor­neys did not file their appeals in time. Mr. Bell is the 31^st to be exe­cut­ed; four oth­ers have been exe­cut­ed in Florida in the first half of 2025.¹ According to a list col­lect­ed by Professor Eric M. Freedman and attor­ney Paul Sessa, Florida accounts for over one-third of the cap­i­tal cas­es in which attor­neys missed dead­lines. Florida’s fail­ure to pro­vide com­pe­tent coun­sel to death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers can be traced to a 1990s change in the appoint­ed-coun­sel struc­ture. The state leg­is­la­ture cre­at­ed a reg­istry of attor­neys to rep­re­sent cap­i­tal defen­dants, includ­ing some with lit­tle to no expe­ri­ence work­ing on death penal­ty cas­es, all while cut­ting fund­ing for cap­i­tal defense offices.

On May 1, 2025, Florida exe­cut­ed Gulf War vet­er­an Jeffrey Hutchinson, despite the fact that no fed­er­al court ever con­sid­ered whether the phys­i­cal and men­tal trau­ma he suf­fered in the mil­i­tary should spare his life. A week before his fed­er­al fil­ing dead­line, Mr. Hutchinson deliv­ered an ulti­ma­tum to his coun­sel: file the motion imme­di­ate­ly or he will file it him­self. His attor­neys agreed to file the motion prompt­ly but then filed it three weeks after the dead­line, under the incor­rect assump­tion they had more time. 

A lit­tle more than a month after Mr. Hutchinson’s exe­cu­tion, Florida exe­cut­ed Anthony Wainwright on June 10, with­out fed­er­al courts ever hear­ing his con­sti­tu­tion­al claims. Mr. Wainwright’s appoint­ed coun­sel for fed­er­al habeas pro­ceed­ings missed the fil­ing dead­line by six days. Federal courts did not present Mr. Wainwright with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to argue for equi­table tolling with an attor­ney oth­er than the one appoint­ed to him — the attor­ney respon­si­ble for the mis­take in his case he was try­ing to appeal.

A Process Cloaked in Secrecy

Florida’s process for deter­min­ing exe­cu­tions and clemen­cy oper­ates in com­plete secre­cy. Under Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has car­ried out more exe­cu­tions than any oth­er state in 2025, with sev­er­al more sched­uled for this year. There are many ques­tions sur­round­ing the governor’s secre­tive deci­sion-mak­ing process — he alone decides who will be exe­cut­ed, and when, and pro­vides no expla­na­tion for this deci­sions. As not­ed by the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel edi­to­r­i­al board, ​“when the state decides to take a life, the ratio­nale behind it should be crys­tal clear, as should the series of deci­sions that pro­pel inmates from their death row cells to the exe­cu­tion cham­ber.” The edi­to­r­i­al boards note that ​“Gov. Ron DeSantis, how­ev­er, feels differently.”

Florida defense attor­ney Ali Shakoor raised con­cerns over the Governor’s selec­tion process in fil­ings for Thomas Gudinas ahead of his June 2025 exe­cu­tion. Mr. Shakoor filed a peti­tion and request­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion for Mr. Gudinas, in part assert­ing that Gov. DeSantis’ office pro­vide an expla­na­tion relat­ed to his deci­sion to sign Mr. Gudinas’ execution warrant.

Mr. Shakoor assert­ed in his peti­tion that “[t]here are no artic­u­lat­ed lim­its to the exec­u­tive dis­cre­tion, there are no guide­lines for the selec­tion process, and the entire process is cloaked in secre­cy.” Mr. Shakoor also expressed his con­cern that since July 2024, four of his clients have received exe­cu­tion war­rants — this is half of the indi­vid­u­als the state exe­cut­ed in that time peri­od. While not alleg­ing that he was being sin­gled out by the gov­er­nor, the peti­tion not­ed that “[i]t defies sta­tis­ti­cal prob­a­bil­i­ty for Thomas Gudinas to be Attorney Shakoor’s fourth death war­rant in less than one year.” There are 61 cap­i­tal post­con­vic­tion attor­neys in Florida, and Mr. Shakoor found it ​“pecu­liar and con­cern­ing” that the governor’s office also served him notices of exe­cu­tion war­rants for pris­on­ers he does not even rep­re­sent. The Supreme Court ulti­mate­ly denied this peti­tion and Mr. Gudinas was exe­cut­ed on June 24.

The con­cern over how Florida selects pris­on­ers for exe­cu­tions is not new. In Florida, the order­ing of exe­cu­tions is left to the dis­cre­tion of the gov­er­nor, where­as in many oth­er states, such as Texas and Georgia, the respon­si­bil­i­ty to set exe­cu­tion dates is left to the courts. Defense attor­neys in Florida have long ques­tioned the ratio­nale behind gov­er­nors’ deci­sions to sign exe­cu­tion war­rants. As Florida’s gov­er­nor, Jeb Bush signed more than two dozen death war­rants, and, not­ing a pat­tern, attor­neys found that many of these indi­vid­u­als had waived their appeals. Under his gov­er­nor­ship, Bob Martinez signed 139 death war­rants in four years, includ­ing for some who had not com­plet­ed all their appeals. According to Marty McClain, a vet­er­an cap­i­tal defend­er, Gov. Martinez’s efforts were intend­ed ​“to keep pres­sure on defense attor­neys.” Neither Gov. Bush nor Gov. Martinez pub­licly com­ment­ed on how they deter­mined the order of executions.

Much like the sched­ul­ing of war­rants for exe­cu­tions in Florida, clemen­cy oper­ates in com­plete secre­cy. The last time a Florida gov­er­nor grant­ed clemen­cy to a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er was in 1983, when Governor Bob Graham com­mut­ed Jesse Rutledge’s death sen­tence over con­cerns with pos­si­ble inno­cence. Gov. DeSantis, who has signed 20 exe­cu­tion war­rants since tak­ing office in 2019 has nev­er held a clemen­cy hear­ing for a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er. One defense lawyer in Florida told the Sun Sentinel, they only know clemen­cy has been denied when the gov­er­nor sets an exe­cu­tion date. Gov. DeSantis’ office has refused to com­ment on how the clemen­cy process works, and the Florida Supreme Court has ruled on sev­er­al occa­sions that exec­u­tive clemen­cy is left to the sole dis­cre­tion of the exec­u­tive branch and is exempt from ​“open gov­ern­ment laws.” Florida statute estab­lish­es that files main­tained by the Office of Executive Clemency are ​“con­fi­den­tial and exempt” from pub­lic records pro­vi­sions; how­ev­er, the gov­er­nor has author­i­ty to release any doc­u­ments he choos­es. This lack of trans­paren­cy leaves the pub­lic with no infor­ma­tion about how elect­ed offi­cials make these life and death decisions.

For many advo­cates, this lack of trans­paren­cy alone is cause for con­cern. Since 1989, 93 indi­vid­u­als have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and exon­er­at­ed in Florida, and near­ly one third (30) of these indi­vid­u­als were sen­tenced to death. Florida leads the nation in death row exon­er­a­tions, and as Maria DeLiberato, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) not­ed, ​“we get it wrong more than any oth­er state.” Legislative changes have intro­duced addi­tion­al vari­ables into Florida’s death penal­ty sys­tem that could increase the risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tion. In 2023, the state leg­is­la­ture, at the urg­ing of Gov. DeSantis, passed leg­is­la­tion that low­ered the vote thresh­old for a death sen­tence from unan­i­mous to 8 – 4 in favor of death. Under this law, Florida joins Alabama as the only two states that autho­rize juries to rec­om­mend death sen­tences in a non-unan­i­mous vote. The U.S. Supreme Court has nev­er direct­ly ruled on whether jury una­nim­i­ty is required in death sentencing. 

This leg­is­la­tion gen­er­at­ed harsh crit­i­cism from legal advo­cates. According to Tiffani Lennon, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the ACLU of Florida, ​“Florida is rapid­ly widen­ing the net of who will be sent to death row with absolute­ly no con­sid­er­a­tion for the flaws that will inevitably lead to the harm of more inno­cent peo­ple.” A 2020 DPI analy­sis found that 22 of 24 Florida exon­er­a­tions for which data was avail­able (92%) involved non-unan­i­mous jury recommendations. 

During the 2025 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the Florida leg­is­la­ture passed sev­er­al new bills that alter how the state will use the death penal­ty. House Bill 903 expands the state’s avail­able meth­ods of exe­cu­tion to include any method ​“not deemed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.” The U.S. Supreme Court has nev­er declared a method of exe­cu­tion uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, so this broad lan­guage would allow the state to adopt a wide vari­ety of exe­cu­tion meth­ods, includ­ing hang­ing or nitro­gen gas. Following the pas­sage of this bill, Ms. Deliberato of FADP called the leg­is­la­tion ​“reck­less,” adding that it ​“impos­es addi­tion­al bur­dens on Florida’s already strained jus­tice sys­tem” and ​“push­es [Florida] even fur­ther into dan­ger­ous and unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry.” The leg­is­la­ture also passed bills in 2025 that would expand statu­to­ry aggra­vat­ing fac­tors and death-penalty eligibility.

Although trans­paren­cy con­cerns are not unique to Florida, Florida has the most secre­tive process. Every state that has car­ried out exe­cu­tions in 2025 has a secre­cy law or pol­i­cy pre­vent­ing the pub­lic from learn­ing crit­i­cal details about how their elect­ed offi­cials use their tax­pay­er dol­lars to per­form exe­cu­tions. States have cit­ed secu­ri­ty con­cerns and prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions for lim­it­ing dis­clo­sure of exe­cu­tion-relat­ed infor­ma­tion, but advo­cates argue that pub­lic account­abil­i­ty requires greater open­ness and trans­paren­cy about gov­ern­ment actions of this significance.