New Report Examines Florida’s Unprecedented Execution Pace and Trends in 2025

The United States car­ried out 47 exe­cu­tions in 2025, and Florida car­ried out 19 — the high­est num­ber in state his­to­ry and more than dou­ble its pre­vi­ous mod­ern record, accord­ing to a year-end report from Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP). Executions in Florida — which aver­aged one exe­cu­tion every 16 days from February 2025 through December 2025 — account­ed for 40% of the 47 exe­cu­tions nation­wide, mak­ing Florida a clear out­lier in the use of the death penal­ty in the United States. Setting Florida’s record-break­ing num­bers aside, 28 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in 10 states in 2025, sim­i­lar to 2024’s total of 25 exe­cu­tions in nine states.

Prior to 2025, the only state that had ever exceed­ed 18 exe­cu­tions in a sin­gle year was Texas, which last did so in 2009. States exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers at high­er rates in the late 1990s and ear­ly 2000s, when pub­lic sup­port for the prac­tice was much high­er than it is today. Unlike most states, where courts and pros­e­cu­tors set exe­cu­tion dates, Florida’s gov­er­nor holds sole author­i­ty to sign death warrants.

The Florida leg­is­la­ture enact­ed sev­er­al bills relat­ed to death penal­ty expan­sion in 2025, includ­ing a manda­to­ry death penal­ty pro­vi­sion for unau­tho­rized immi­grants con­vict­ed of cer­tain cap­i­tal crimes; addi­tion­al aggra­vat­ing fac­tors for crimes at schools, gov­ern­ment, or reli­gious gath­er­ings, and for the delib­er­ate tar­get­ing of politi­cians includ­ing gov­er­nors and oth­er high-rank­ing offi­cials; and expan­sion of pos­si­ble exe­cu­tion meth­ods to include any method ​“not deemed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.” FADP’s report notes the U.S. Supreme Court has nev­er found a method of exe­cu­tion uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and ​“that Florida’s pris­on­ers could pre­sum­ably be exe­cut­ed by fir­ing squad, nitro­gen suf­fo­ca­tion, hang­ing, behead­ing, or any oth­er method imag­in­able.” The state also des­ig­nat­ed sex­u­al traf­fick­ing of a vul­ner­a­ble per­son as a cap­i­tal felony, despite Supreme Court prece­dent estab­lished in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008) pro­hibit­ing death sen­tences for non-homicide crimes.

The state’s cur­rent exe­cu­tion method also received scruti­ny in FADP’s report. Florida remains the only state using a three-drug pro­to­col con­sist­ing of eto­mi­date, rocuro­ni­um bro­mide, and potas­si­um acetate. Court fil­ings from December 2025 pre­sent­ed evi­dence of sig­nif­i­cant pro­ce­dur­al fail­ures, includ­ing four exe­cu­tions using expired eto­mi­date, under­dos­ing of required drugs in two exe­cu­tions, unlogged eto­mi­date appear­ing in autop­sy results, and using lido­caine, which is not list­ed in the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. In response to these fail­ures, for­mer Florida State Prison Warden Ron McAndrew, who over­saw three exe­cu­tions, warned in the Tampa Bay Times that the cur­rent pace of exe­cu­tions is ​“test­ing the lim­its of the law.” FADP’s report notes the lack of trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing Florida’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col makes it ​“increas­ing­ly like­ly that addi­tion­al details about the pro­ce­dur­al fail­ures and moral injuries inflict­ed upon state employ­ees dur­ing this exe­cu­tion spree will reveal themselves.”

The report also doc­u­ments sev­er­al trou­bling pat­terns among those exe­cut­ed in Florida in 2025. Four indi­vid­u­als—James Ford, David Pittman, Victor Jones, and Frank Walls—had thor­ough­ly doc­u­ment­ed intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, though the report states all four indi­vid­u­als’ claims were dis­missed ​“not due to a lack of mer­it, but because they were deemed raised too late or incor­rect­ly.” Florida exe­cut­ed these four men despite cat­e­gor­i­cal legal pro­tec­tions for indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty under both Florida and fed­er­al law. Eight peo­ple exe­cut­ed were sen­tenced to death under schemes allow­ing non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions, and Florida’s cur­rent statute per­mits death sen­tences with just 8 of 12 jurors in agree­ment, the low­est thresh­old in the coun­try. FADP high­lights that almost all, 97%, of Florida’s 30 death row exonerees were sen­tenced to death by non-unan­i­mous juries. Seven¹ of the 19 exe­cut­ed indi­vid­u­als had served in the U.S. mil­i­tary, con­sti­tut­ing 70% of vet­er­ans exe­cut­ed nation­wide in 2025. Four indi­vid­u­als faced exe­cu­tion with­out ade­quate legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, with Bryan Jennings and Norman Grim hav­ing death war­rants signed while they did not have state-appoint­ed coun­sel, and Anthony Wainwright​’s attor­ney had not vis­it­ed him in more than a decade. Two exe­cut­ed indi­vid­u­als — Victor Jones and Michael Bell—were sur­vivors of abuse at state-run reform schools that the Florida Legislature offi­cial­ly acknowl­edged the trau­ma endured at these state facil­i­ties and compensated victims.

The report con­cludes that 2025 rep­re­sent­ed ​“a year in which Florida chose to treat human lives as an accept­able cost in the pur­suit of polit­i­cal advan­tage.” Court fil­ings cit­ed in the report allege that some death war­rants were signed for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es rather than through indi­vid­u­al­ized review, includ­ing one war­rant issued two hours after attor­neys filed a fed­er­al law­suit alleg­ing racial bias in the war­rant-selec­tion process. Grace Hanna, FADP’s Executive Director, wrote: ​“This year asked more of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty than any year before it. We bore wit­ness to an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of exe­cu­tions, pro­found loss, and a sys­tem increas­ing­ly defined by speed rather than justice.”