Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor Calls Secrecy Around Florida’s Recent Spate of Executions ​“Troubling”

Melvin Trotter, Ronnie Heath, and Frank Walls — the most recent of the twen­ty-one pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed by the state of Florida over the past twelve months — all raised seri­ous con­cerns about Florida’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col dur­ing the extreme­ly trun­cat­ed peri­od between the issuance of their death war­rants and their exe­cu­tions. Each com­plaint argued that Florida’s fail­ure to fol­low its own exe­cu­tion pro­to­col over the past year raised the like­li­hood that their own exe­cu­tions would vio­late the Eighth Amendment by caus­ing them addi­tion­al and unnec­es­sary pain and suffering. 

Mr. Trotter and his attor­neys asked for a review of exe­cu­tions in Florida in light of evi­dence of ​“mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion” of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Mr. Heath asked the courts to inves­ti­gate poten­tial prob­lems with the pro­to­col as applied and request­ed addi­tion­al records to help prove his claim. In his chal­lenge to Florida’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, Mr. Walls raised con­cerns that the ​“source of the drugs” is ​“unknown,” and “[l]ittle is known about [] stan­dards for stor­ing or test­ing of the drugs[.]” His stay of exe­cu­tion was barred on pro­ce­dur­al grounds and his exe­cu­tion was allowed to pro­ceed even though a fed­er­al judge con­ced­ed Mr. Walls had ​“pre­sent­ed evi­dence demon­strat­ing that he may well suf­fer a cru­el death by expe­ri­enc­ing a feel­ing akin to drowning.” 

All three cas­es drew on a tranche of Florida Department of Corrections’ (FDOC) records released in an October 2025 response to a pub­lic records request. Citing to these records in his fil­ing with the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Heath’s attor­neys not­ed ​“cor­rec­tions offi­cials have mis­han­dled drugs and put inmates to death using expired drugs, incor­rect dosages of drugs, and drugs not called for in the State’s offi­cial written protocol.” 

FDOC logs show that the eto­mi­date used in the exe­cu­tions of four indi­vid­u­als in August and September of 2025 (Kayle Bates, Curtis Windom, David Pittman and Victor Jones) had expired more than six months pri­or to their use. Dr. Joel Zivot, an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist and pro­fes­sor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta who reviewed the FDOC logs for Mr. Heath, assessed, “[a]dministering expired drugs to a pris­on­er dur­ing a lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tion could [] result in a drawn-out, torturous execution.” 

Florida’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col uses three drugs. First, the pris­on­er is inject­ed intra­venous­ly with 200 mil­ligrams of eto­mi­date, a seda­tive, fol­lowed by 1000 mil­ligrams of rocuro­ni­um bro­mide, a par­a­lyt­ic agent, and then 240 mil­liequiv­a­lents of potas­si­um acetate, which induces car­diac arrest. The inten­tion is to sedate the indi­vid­ual before induc­ing a car­diac arrest. As attor­neys for Mr. Heath not­ed, using the incor­rect dosage or an expired seda­tive increas­es ​“the risk of con­scious pain dur­ing an exe­cu­tion … and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pro­longed suf­fer­ing.” The par­a­lyt­ic agent can com­pound the prob­lem because it ​“gen­er­al­ly masks out­ward signs of distress.” 

Additionally, FDOC logs show that dur­ing the exe­cu­tions of Edward James and Michael Tanzi in 2025, the FDOC admin­is­tered lido­caine, a drug not called for in the protocol. 

Having uncov­ered these prob­lems in the admin­is­tra­tion of Florida’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, attor­neys for Mr. Heath filed addi­tion­al pub­lic records requests after FDOC ​“refused to explain the dis­turb­ing errors” the ear­li­er dis­clo­sures had revealed. These new requests, which were refused by FDOC, were then appealed to the courts, where the Florida Supreme Court upheld FDOC’s refusal, cit­ing Florida’s secre­cy statutes. These statutes clas­si­fy cer­tain records, includ­ing infor­ma­tion iden­ti­fy­ing ​“an exe­cu­tion­er, or any per­son pre­scrib­ing, prepar­ing, com­pound­ing, dis­pens­ing, or admin­is­ter­ing a lethal injec­tion” as con­fi­den­tial and exempt from pub­lic records act disclosure. 

It is this lack of trans­paren­cy that drew Justice Sotomayor’s atten­tion, when faced with Mr. Trotter’s request for a stay of exe­cu­tion — the third case in two months rais­ing essen­tial­ly the same claims about Florida’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. In her state­ment accom­pa­ny­ing the denial of cer­tio­rari to Mr. Trotter, Justice Sotomayor agreed with the major­i­ty that the evi­den­tiary sup­port for Mr. Trotter’s claim was ​“lack­ing” but that “[n]evertheless, I write to express con­cern about Florida’s imple­men­ta­tion of its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and the secre­cy sur­round­ing it[,]” call­ing ​“the record to date [] troubling.” 

To explain her con­cerns, Justice Sotomayor cit­ed to evi­dence that FDOC used ​“expired drugs, []incor­rect drug dos­es, [] non­pro­to­col drugs”; had record­keep­ing ​“laps­es” that might obscure ​“yet addi­tion­al fail­ings”; and that pub­lic records requests ​“that would prove or dis­prove claims like [Mr. ] Trotter’s” had been denied. She said the Florida courts were plac­ing pris­on­ers fac­ing the death penal­ty in a ​“Catch-22” by ​“affirm[ing] the denial of requests for records…at least in part, because the pris­on­ers do not yet have enough infor­ma­tion to raise a[n] Eighth Amendment claim.” ​“The very rea­son the pris­on­ers are seek­ing the records,” she con­tin­ues, ​“is to gath­er enough infor­ma­tion to raise” such a claim.