Scheduled Execution of Billy Kearse Renews Constitutional Alarms About Pace of Executions in Florida

“I am extreme­ly con­cerned by the recent pace of death war­rants and the speed with which the par­ties and involved enti­ties must car­ry out their respec­tive duties.” Florida Supreme Court Justice Jorge Labarga wrote those words in 2023, a year in which Florida con­duct­ed six exe­cu­tions with an aver­age war­rant peri­od of 36 days. Such a pace was already strain­ing the state’s judi­cial, legal, and prison sys­tems. But in 2025, under the sole author­i­ty of Governor Ron DeSantis, the state tripled that num­ber of exe­cu­tions — to a record-break­ing 19 — and shrank the aver­age war­rant peri­od to 31 days. That pace has con­tin­ued into 2026 with exe­cu­tions sched­uled rough­ly every two weeks. Advocates argue that this relent­less speed has pushed the sys­tem to its break­ing point, with seri­ous constitutional consequences. 

In gen­er­al, a pris­on­er only becomes eli­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion after com­plet­ing a num­ber of appeals: his direct appeal, which focus­es on issues with­in the tri­al record; his state post­con­vic­tion appeal, which involves claims out­side the tri­al record such as inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct; and his fed­er­al habeas appeal, where the fed­er­al courts review the deci­sions of the state courts for ​“rea­son­able­ness.” However, the sign­ing of an exe­cu­tion war­rant trig­gers new poten­tial claims, such as chal­lenges to the exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. This cre­ates, in the words of for­mer Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente, a ​“fire drill” where attor­neys work to raise and present those claims — and any oth­ers remain­ing from ear­li­er appeals or based on new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence — with­in the time peri­od laid out in the exe­cu­tion war­rant. This lit­i­ga­tion can involve hun­dreds of pages of brief­ing, thou­sands of pages of records, and com­plex tes­ti­mo­ny from experts and witnesses. 

States take vary­ing approach­es as to who issues the exe­cu­tion war­rant and its length. The pow­er belongs to the state supreme court in many juris­dic­tions, to the tri­al court judge in oth­ers, and to the gov­er­nor in a small hand­ful of states. These actors often respond to requests from state pros­e­cu­tors to set dates. And while many states leave the length of the war­rant to the issuer’s dis­cre­tion, some require cer­tain amounts of time. For instance, Texas, which has con­duct­ed more exe­cu­tions than any oth­er state in the mod­ern era, requires at least 90 days after the war­rant issues before the exe­cu­tion can occur. However, the tri­al courts which set the dates have tend­ed to allow even more time in recent years: Texas exe­cu­tions sched­uled in 2025 and 2026 have had war­rants about four months long or more. In Tennessee, the state supreme court issued four exe­cu­tion war­rants on the same day last September, set to occur from eight to four­teen months later. 

Compared to oth­er exe­cut­ing juris­dic­tions, Florida is an out­lier because of its short war­rant peri­ods and its deci­sion to grant the sole author­i­ty to set war­rants to the gov­er­nor. Florida law allows the gov­er­nor to issue exe­cu­tion war­rants up to 180 days long, but last year Gov. DeSantis set none longer than 34 days. Advocates have also crit­i­cized the lack of trans­paren­cy as to who was select­ed for a war­rant. A few men, such as Bryan Jennings and Norman Grim, had no state coun­sel when their exe­cu­tion dates were set. The clock ticked away while courts scram­bled to appoint attor­neys, who then had to spend more time famil­iar­iz­ing them­selves with the volu­mi­nous records in the cas­es in order to file claims. Mr. Jennings’ new­ly appoint­ed coun­sel argued in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court that ​“Florida has reached a cri­sis point in its cap­i­tal post­con­vic­tion and death warrant litigation.” 

While Florida’s aver­age exe­cu­tion war­rant length in 2025 was just one month, the aver­age length of war­rants across all oth­er states was almost three times that amount — about 80 days. 

The risk that such a short war­rant peri­od under­mines a death-sen­tenced prisoner’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to rep­re­sen­ta­tion has been poignant­ly illus­trat­ed in the case of Billy Kearse, who is set to be exe­cut­ed on March 3. Gov. DeSantis signed Mr. Kearse’s death war­rant on January 29, giv­ing defense attor­neys just 33 days to lit­i­gate his final claims. According to a defense motion request­ing more time, when the war­rant was issued, Mr. Kearse’s lead attor­ney of two decades Paul Kalil ​“was at the hos­pi­tal meet­ing with his father’s care team to dis­cuss hos­pice.” Despite his father’s frag­ile health con­di­tion, Mr. Kalil began ​“work­ing almost around the clock…to ade­quate­ly rep­re­sent Mr. Kearse and to meet the cir­cuit court’s scheduling deadlines.” 

Mr. Kalil’s father was admit­ted to hos­pice care on February 5 and passed away three days lat­er. During this peri­od, the defense filed mul­ti­ple motions request­ing exten­sions, all of which the state opposed. ​“Due to his eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions to Mr. Kearse, Mr. Kalil has been unable to be with his father in the final days of his life… Mr. Kalil wants and needs to spend time with his father and oth­er fam­i­ly in the com­ing day(s),” one motion argued. Florida courts grant­ed just a 48-hour exten­sion for Mr. Kearse’s remain­ing defense attor­neys to file his postconviction petition. 

The peti­tion was filed, but his remain­ing attor­neys wrote that the ​“fact that [it] was able to be filed under the most ardu­ous and unten­able cir­cum­stances by no means indi­cates the cri­sis is over…it is just the begin­ning.” They not­ed that Mr. Kalil was ​“still out of the office griev­ing the recent death of his father…and mak­ing deci­sions about bur­ial and oth­er arrange­ments” with his fam­i­ly. Therefore, he would not be able to review the state’s response, which would like­ly ​“con­tain a byzan­tine maze of pro­ce­dur­al argu­ments requir­ing the attor­ney with the most in-depth knowl­edge of the vast pro­ce­dur­al his­to­ry in this case to untangle.” 

“Under no oth­er imag­in­able cir­cum­stances in any type of case would a rea­son­able request for a con­tin­u­ance not be grant­ed,” the attor­neys wrote, ask­ing for a two-week exten­sion of time or stay of exe­cu­tion. ​“It is also unnec­es­sary and infringes on Mr. Kearse’s right to the effec­tive assis­tance of his col­lat­er­al coun­sel.” The state again opposed this request, and the Florida Supreme Court refused to grant any additional time. 

Short war­rant peri­ods increase the bur­den on every per­son involved in the process, not just defense attor­neys. In 2018, Justice Pariente wrote that the Florida Supreme Court and defense attor­neys ​“were forced to race against the clock” to meet a 27-day war­rant sched­ule. ​“I urge the Executive branch, in set­ting war­rant peri­ods, to con­sid­er the judi­cial pro­ceed­ings that must be com­plet­ed before the date of exe­cu­tion,” she wrote. (Justice Pariente has also pub­licly advo­cat­ed for Mr. Kearse to be spared from exe­cu­tion due to his age when he killed a police offi­cer — just 18 — and evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty.) Courts must bal­ance exe­cu­tion lit­i­ga­tion with their often-strained dock­et of oth­er cas­es, increas­ing the risk of con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions falling through the cracks. 

And Ron McAndrew, for­mer war­den of Florida State Prison, spoke out in December 2025 about the toll these time­lines take on prison staff. “[E]xecutions depend on human beings per­form­ing com­plex, high-risk tasks under extreme pres­sure,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times. He high­light­ed evi­dence of seri­ous errors by prison staff in last year’s exe­cu­tions: a law­suit revealed that Florida used an expired drug in four exe­cu­tions, did not pre­pare enough of a drug in two oth­ers, failed to doc­u­ment use of a drug that was con­firmed present in an autop­sy, and used an unau­tho­rized numb­ing agent in two more exe­cu­tions. This means that half of Florida’s 2025 exe­cu­tions had known vio­la­tions of the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, which car­ried the risk of uncon­sti­tu­tion­al pain and tor­ture in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment.

“When war­rants pile up, staff have less time to review pro­ce­dures, dou­ble-check doc­u­men­ta­tion, or recov­er from the last exe­cu­tion before being asked to car­ry out the next one,” Mr. McAndrew wrote. He ques­tioned ​“whether Florida can con­tin­ue killing on a sched­ule with­out cut­ting con­sti­tu­tion­al cor­ners — and with­out break­ing the peo­ple it asks to car­ry out those deaths.”