Florida’s Outlier Status: Thirteen of the Nation’s Twenty-Three Executions in 2026, Even as Executions Elsewhere Decline

Florida exe­cut­ed William Silvia on August 18, 2026, the state’s 13^th exe­cu­tion of the year and the 23^rd nation­al­ly. Florida has now car­ried out 57 per­cent of this year’s exe­cu­tions in the United States and 32 of the 70 car­ried out nation­wide since January 2025. The total builds on 2025, when Florida exe­cut­ed 19 peo­ple, the most in any year since the state rein­stat­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1976 and more than dou­ble its pre­vi­ous mod­ern record of eight.

Removing Florida from the nation­al exe­cu­tion total reveals the con­tin­ued decline of the death penal­ty every­where else. Last year, in the first six months of 2025, states oth­er than Florida car­ried out 18 exe­cu­tions. In the first six months of 2026, they car­ried out sev­en. The nation­al half-year total fell from 25 to 16 even as Florida’s own half-year total rose from 7 to 9 between 2025 and 2026. Florida’s pace of exe­cu­tions also accel­er­at­ed. The state aver­aged one exe­cu­tion every 16 days across 2025, accord­ing to Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP). Between February 10 and August 18, 2026, the inter­val nar­rowed to rough­ly one every 14 days.

Outside of Florida, execution activity remains low and concentrated in a small number of states

Six states have car­ried out exe­cu­tions through August 2026: Alabama (1), Arizona (1), Florida (13), Oklahoma (3), Tennessee (1), and Texas (4). All but one took place in south­ern states. Twenty-sev­en states retain the death penal­ty, but 10 of them have not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in a decade or more. Four of these states also account­ed for nine of the 144 new death sen­tences imposed nation­wide over that peri­od, and Alabama and Oklahoma are the only states to car­ry out an exe­cu­tion with­out impos­ing a new death sentence.

Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee each car­ried out an exe­cu­tion on August 13, 2026, the first time three exe­cu­tions have tak­en place on the same day in the United States since January 7, 2010. That sin­gle day added two states to a list that had oth­er­wise held at four all year, and Florida’s total still exceeds the com­bined total of the five oth­er states. As of August 25, ten fur­ther exe­cu­tions are sched­uled nation­wide for the remain­der of 2026, and the next two are in Florida.

Florida governor’s warrant authority shapes execution activity, not courts

Warrant out­comes in 2025 show how much of the nation­al fig­ure turns on deci­sions made by indi­vid­ual gov­er­nors. Last year, Florida signed 19 death war­rants and car­ried out 19 exe­cu­tions, with no stays or resched­ules. Ohio had six sched­uled exe­cu­tions and car­ried out none, with all six result­ing in reprieves. Louisiana signed five war­rants and car­ried out one. Nationally, 64 war­rants pro­duced 47 executions.

Unlike most states, where courts and pros­e­cu­tors set exe­cu­tion dates, Florida’s gov­er­nor holds sole author­i­ty to sign death war­rants. Under Fla. Stat. § 922.052, the Governor must issue a war­rant with­in 30 days of receiv­ing a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion let­ter from the clerk of the Florida Supreme Court, and the war­rant directs the war­den to car­ry out the sen­tence with­in 180 days at a date the Governor selects. The prac­tice of set­ting exe­cu­tion dates rough­ly 30 days after sign­ing falls well with­in that 180-day win­dow and reflects the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion’s choice rather than a statu­to­ry require­ment. Governor Ron DeSantis has also not giv­en rea­sons for the selec­tion of cer­tain pris­on­ers for exe­cu­tion. Attorneys inter­viewed by ProPublica described the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of war­rant tim­ing as affect­ing case preparation.

Executions outpace new death sentences 

New death sen­tences nation­al­ly peaked at 316 in 1996. In 2025, Florida car­ried out 19 exe­cu­tions and imposed five new death sen­tences, and car­ried out thir­teen exe­cu­tions and imposed five new death sen­tences through August 2026. The state is remov­ing peo­ple from death row by exe­cu­tion rough­ly three times faster than its juries are adding them.

Of the 14 death sen­tences imposed nation­wide through August 2026, nine came from unan­i­mous juries. Florida imposed the high­est num­ber of new death sen­tences, five, one of which came from a unan­i­mous jury. Arizona and Texas each imposed two, and California, Missouri, North Carolina, and Tennessee each imposed one. Nebraska’s sin­gle death sen­tence was imposed by a pan­el of judges. Capital juries chose life at least 19 times over the same peri­od, and 16 of those deci­sions came from juries in Alabama and Florida, the two states where pros­e­cu­tors sought death most often. Alabama pros­e­cu­tors sought the death penal­ty more fre­quent­ly than those in any oth­er state but obtained no death sentences.

Florida’s death row pop­u­la­tion of 256 is sec­ond only to California, which has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2006.

Florida Supreme Court upholds nation’s lowest jury sentencing threshold of 8 – 4

Florida requires the agree­ment of 8 of 12 jurors to impose a death sen­tence, the low­est thresh­old in the coun­try. Alabama requires 10, and Mississippi’s cap­i­tal sex­u­al bat­tery law enact­ed in April 2026 also per­mits death for this crime only on the agree­ment of 8 jurors, while Mississippi homi­cide sen­tences must still be unan­i­mous. On December 18, 2025, the Florida Supreme Court reject­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges to the 8 – 4 thresh­old in Jackson v. State and Hunt v. State, with six of sev­en jus­tices join­ing the opinion.

Analysis pub­lished by State Court Report found that close to 60 per­cent of peo­ple on Florida’s death row were sen­tenced by non-unan­i­mous juries. FADP reports that 97 per­cent of the state’s 30 death row exonerees, the most of any state, were sen­tenced the same way.

Procedural timing, not case facts or merits, determines who receives Hurst relief

The pool from which Florida draws its war­rants was shaped less by any recent change in law than by a series of pro­ce­dur­al rul­ings begin­ning a decade ago.

After Hurst v. Florida (2016), the Florida Supreme Court had to decide which pris­on­ers sen­tenced under the inval­i­dat­ed scheme would receive new sen­tenc­ing hear­ings. In Mosley v. State and Asay v. State, both decid­ed in 2016, the court drew the line at June 24, 2002, the date the U.S. Supreme Court decid­ed Ring v. Arizona. Prisoners whose death sen­tences became final after that date qual­i­fied for relief. Prisoners whose sen­tences became final before it did not, though they had been sen­tenced under the iden­ti­cal statute. The American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Representation Project observed that the court’s June 24, 2002 cut­off cre­at­ed a dis­tinc­tion between pris­on­ers sen­tenced under the same statute, with relief depen­dent on direct appeal com­ple­tion dates. At the time of the deci­sion, rough­ly 45 per­cent of peo­ple on Florida’s death row held pre-Ring sentences.

The con­se­quences are mea­sur­able on both sides of that line. DPI’s track­ing of Florida appeals decid­ed in light of Hurst record­ed 313 pris­on­ers reviewed and 169 denied relief as of March 2025. Among pris­on­ers who obtained relief, 145 cas­es pro­ceed­ed to resen­tenc­ing. As of January 2026, 125 of those cas­es had been resolved. Six resolved with­out a new penal­ty phase, and the remain­ing 119 went to a resen­tenc­ing hear­ing. Of those 119, 93, or 78 per­cent, end­ed in life sen­tences. Prisoners whose sen­tences fell out­side Hurst’s scope kept the sen­tences they already had, and it is from that group that Florida has drawn most of its recent executions.

The date a direct appeal con­clud­ed is not the only tim­ing vari­able. Between 2016 and 2020, the Florida Supreme Court read Hurst to require a unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion before a death sen­tence could be imposed, then aban­doned that inter­pre­ta­tion in 2020. Mr. Silvia’s case turned on that shift. His jury had rec­om­mend­ed death by a vote of 11 to 1, suf­fi­cient under Florida’s cur­rent statute but not under the read­ing the court held while his post-Hurst lit­i­ga­tion pro­ceed­ed. His death sen­tence was rein­stat­ed in 2018 on the ground that he had waived post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings and coun­sel in 2012. Under the inter­pre­ta­tion the court adopt­ed two years lat­er, the same 11 – 1 ver­dict would have raised no ques­tion at all.

Most peo­ple Florida has exe­cut­ed since January 2025 were sen­tenced before Hurst relief became avail­able. FADP found that eight of the 19 peo­ple Florida exe­cut­ed in 2025 had been sen­tenced under schemes per­mit­ting non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions. Nationally, the 47 peo­ple exe­cut­ed in 2025 spent an aver­age of 27 years on death row. Florida exe­cut­ed James Hitchcock on April 30, 2026, near­ly 50 years after his con­vic­tion. It was Mr. Hitchcock’s 2017 chal­lenge that prompt­ed the Florida Supreme Court to reaf­firm the Ring-based cut­off in a brief per curi­am opin­ion, over dis­sents from Justices Barbara Pariente and R. Fred Lewis.

Adequate counsel claims contested as Florida executions accelerate

Whether Florida pro­vides ade­quate post-con­vic­tion coun­sel was con­test­ed in the week before Mr. Silvia’s execution.

The Capital Collateral Regional Counsel (CCRC) is the state agency respon­si­ble for rep­re­sent­ing death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings. Mr. Silvia’s attor­neys argued that the agency could not pro­vide him ade­quate assis­tance because it was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ing anoth­er pris­on­er under an active exe­cu­tion war­rant. The Florida Supreme Court reject­ed the appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stay the exe­cu­tion on August 18.

The CCRC’s argu­ment con­flicts with Florida’s fed­er­al opt-in appli­ca­tion, where offi­cials assert its coun­sel sys­tem is ade­quate. The Department of Justice pro­posed reg­u­la­tions in 2026 to short­en fil­ing dead­lines and cur­tail fed­er­al review in cap­i­tal cas­es through an opt-in cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process avail­able to states that pro­vide ade­quate post-con­vic­tion coun­sel. Six states applied, Florida among them, on the basis of state offi­cials’ asser­tions about its coun­sel sys­tem dat­ing to 2015.

FADP has doc­u­ment­ed the defi­cien­cies of the sys­tem under war­rant con­di­tions. Two peo­ple, Bryan Jennings and Norman Grim, had death war­rants signed while they had no state-appoint­ed post-con­vic­tion coun­sel. Anthony Wainwright’s attor­ney had not vis­it­ed him in more than a decade, and Mr. Wainwright was exe­cut­ed on June 10, 2025 after his legal team missed the dead­line to file his fed­er­al habeas peti­tion, the process by which incar­cer­at­ed peo­ple chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of their deten­tion. As a direct con­se­quence of his attor­neys’ error, he received no fed­er­al judi­cial review of his constitutional claims.

Florida fails to adequately protect people with mental illness and intellectual disability

FADP described Mr. Silvia as a per­son with doc­u­ment­ed delu­sion­al think­ing, para­noia, alco­hol depen­den­cy, and a sur­vivor of phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al abuse in child­hood. Serious men­tal ill­ness does not cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly bar exe­cu­tion under fed­er­al or Florida law. Under Florida law, a per­son with severe men­tal ill­ness may be exe­cut­ed if he under­stands the fact and rea­son for execution.

Intellectual dis­abil­i­ty is treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly – in prin­ci­ple. Both Florida and fed­er­al law cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it exe­cut­ing peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty under Atkins v. Virginia (2002). FADP doc­u­ment­ed four peo­ple exe­cut­ed by Florida in 2025, all of whom had thor­ough­ly doc­u­ment­ed intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claims that were dis­missed not on the mer­its but because of pro­ce­dur­al fail­ures. This prac­tice is not unique to Florida. Texas exe­cut­ed Edward Busby on May 14, 2026, the 600^th per­son exe­cut­ed in the state since 1982, even after experts for both the pros­e­cu­tion and the defense con­clud­ed he had an intellectual disability.

Two of the peo­ple Florida exe­cut­ed in 2025, Victor Jones and Michael Bell, were sur­vivors of abuse at state-run reform schools. The Florida Legislature has for­mal­ly acknowl­edged the abuse at those facil­i­ties and compensated victims.

Florida’s lethal injection protocol raises method and transparency concerns

Florida has car­ried out every exe­cu­tion in this peri­od by lethal injec­tion, using a three-drug pro­to­col of eto­mi­date, rocuro­ni­um bro­mide, and potas­si­um acetate, and is the only state to use this pro­to­col. Counsel for Ronald Heath, exe­cut­ed in December 2025, unsuc­cess­ful­ly argued that evi­dence of pro­ce­dur­al fail­ures, includ­ing four exe­cu­tions using expired eto­mi­date, under­dos­ing in two exe­cu­tions, unlogged eto­mi­date appear­ing in autop­sy results, and the use of lido­caine, which is not list­ed, should halt future use of the protocol.

HB 903, signed on May 22, 2025 and effec­tive July 1, 2025, autho­rizes the state to use any method ​“not deemed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al” if lethal injec­tion and elec­tro­cu­tion are unavail­able. HB 873, enact­ed in 2022, exempts the Department of Corrections from dis­clos­ing lethal injec­tion drug sup­pli­ers or the iden­ti­ties of those who admin­is­ter them. Pamela Colloff report­ed for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine that the pace has pro­duced last­ing harm among the peo­ple required to car­ry out and wit­ness exe­cu­tions, includ­ing a for­mer Florida State Prison warden.

Florida legislature has expanded use of the death penalty

Florida enact­ed five death penal­ty-relat­ed laws in 2025, more than any oth­er state. New laws includ­ed a manda­to­ry death sen­tence pro­vi­sion for undoc­u­ment­ed per­sons, new aggra­vat­ing fac­tors, expan­sion of per­mis­si­ble exe­cu­tion meth­ods, and des­ig­na­tion of sex­u­al traf­fick­ing of a vul­ner­a­ble per­son as a cap­i­tal offense. Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008) restricts cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to crimes result­ing in death.

Florida’s 2026 ses­sion end­ed on February 13, and no bill expand­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment passed. Expansion moved else­where. Alabama and Mississippi enact­ed child rape death penal­ty laws in February and April 2026, fol­low­ing five oth­er states over the pre­vi­ous three years, with spon­sors describ­ing the statutes as intend­ed to prompt the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit Kennedy.

Decisions by Florida governors reveal non-existence of clemency

No Florida gov­er­nor has grant­ed clemen­cy to a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er since 1983. The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops urged Gov. DeSantis to stay the July 28 exe­cu­tions of James Duckett and Dominick Occhicone and to com­mute both sen­tences. He declined. The two men were exe­cut­ed six hours apart, the first dou­ble exe­cu­tion in Florida since May 12, 1964.

Mr. Duckett’s exe­cu­tion had been set for March 31, 2026, and the Florida Supreme Court stayed it five days before­hand to per­mit DNA test­ing his coun­sel argued would sup­port a claim of inno­cence. The results were incon­clu­sive. After the court lift­ed the stay on July 8, Gov. DeSantis resched­uled the exe­cu­tion for the date already assigned to Mr. Occhicone, who at 80 became the old­est per­son exe­cut­ed in Florida’s modern history.

The data confirm Florida’s outlier status

Florida’s exe­cu­tion activ­i­ty since January 2025 is a state-spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy choice. All oth­er mea­sures that track jury ver­dicts and sen­tences, death row size, and the num­ber of exe­cut­ing states have con­tin­ued on a down­ward trend through the first half of 2026. The 2025 nation­al total of 47 exe­cu­tions was the high­est since 2009, but out­side Florida that year pro­duced 28 exe­cu­tions in 10 states, close to the 25 exe­cu­tions in 9 states record­ed in 2024.

Florida’s num­bers reflect a num­ber of unique vari­ables: the war­rant prac­tice of one gov­er­nor, oper­at­ing with unprece­dent­ed statu­to­ry author­i­ty, on a pop­u­la­tion whose death sen­tences large­ly reflect pro­ce­dur­al rul­ings, in a state with the nation’s low­est jury sen­tenc­ing thresh­old, with the most death row exon­er­a­tions, and no grants of clemen­cy since 1983.

Gov. DeSantis has cit­ed the age of cas­es and fam­i­lies’ requests for clo­sure as jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the increased pace. Family mem­bers of Patricia Wyatt, whom Mr. Silvia was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing in 2006, said in a state­ment that no exe­cu­tion could return her to her chil­dren, and asked that she be remem­bered for a life larg­er than the act that end­ed it. Gov. DeSantis leaves office in January 2027. Harold Lucas is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on September 1 and Daniel Conahan Jr. on September 10. If they occur, Florida will have con­duct­ed 15 exe­cu­tions in 2026 and 34 since January 2025. The war­rant author­i­ty in § 922.052 is statu­to­ry and unaf­fect­ed by the change in office­hold­er, and 256 peo­ple remain under sen­tence of death in Florida.