DeSantis signs 20th death warrant of 2026: Jesse Guardado set for Nov. 5 execution

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday, Oct. 5, signed a death warrant for Jesse Guardado, scheduling the 64-year-old's execution for Thursday, Nov. 5, at Florida State Prison for the 2004 murder of Jackie Malone, a 75-year-old Walton County woman who had helped him find housing and work. It is the 20th death warrant DeSantis has signed this year, a number that puts Florida in position to break the modern-era record for executions in a single year that the state set in 2025.

Florida carried out 19 executions in 2025, the most in any year since capital punishment resumed after 1976. The state has already executed 16 people in 2026, most recently Curtis Wilkie Beasley Sr. on Sept. 29, and four more executions, including Guardado's, are now on the calendar for the next month.

The crime

According to court records summarized by the Florida Supreme Court, Guardado had known Malone since 2003 and had rented places to live from her. She had helped him financially on numerous occasions, let him stay overnight in her home between rentals and helped him land the job he held at a local water treatment plant.

On Sept. 13, 2004, Guardado was in the middle of a crack cocaine binge and desperate for money, the court wrote. Earlier that day he tried to rob a local grocery store with a knife, but an employee thwarted the attempt. He then decided to rob and kill Malone, according to the court, because she lived in a secluded area and would open her door to him because of their relationship.

That night, Guardado armed himself with a metal breaker bar and retrieved a kitchen knife from his disabled truck in a Walmart parking lot in DeFuniak Springs. When Malone answered her door, he told her he needed to use the telephone. As she turned to let him in, he struck her repeatedly in the head with the breaker bar. When she did not die, he stabbed her several times, including in the heart, and slashed her throat. He then searched her bedroom and took her jewelry box, briefcase, purse and cell phone.

The court noted that Guardado made sure he had a change of clothes in his girlfriend's car that night because a hurricane was due to make landfall within days. Hurricane Ivan made landfall near the Alabama-Florida line on Sept. 16, 2004, three days after the killing, and battered the western Panhandle.

Guilty plea and unanimous jury

Guardado was indicted on charges of first-degree murder and robbery with a weapon and pleaded guilty to both counts without seeking a plea bargain. At the penalty phase, the jury returned a unanimous recommendation of death, and the trial court sentenced him to death in October 2005.

The trial court found five aggravating factors, including that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, that it was cold, calculated and premeditated, and that Guardado committed it while on conditional release from prison. His record included convictions for armed robbery in 1984 and for robbery offenses in 1990 and 1991, according to the court.

The judge also found 19 nonstatutory mitigating factors and gave great weight to several of them, including Guardado's guilty plea, his acceptance of responsibility, his remorse and his cooperation with law enforcement, which extended to helping officers recover evidence that would be used against him. Other mitigators included a long history of drug addiction that began in his early teens and childhood trauma. The court concluded the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigation.

Years of appeals

The Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence in 2007. In 2015, the court affirmed a lower court's denial of postconviction relief, rejecting Guardado's claims that his trial lawyers were ineffective at both the guilt and penalty phases.

In 2024, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his federal challenge, which included arguments that his attorneys failed to adequately investigate mitigating evidence during the penalty phase, according to WUSF and CBS News Miami. Guardado's lawyers are expected to file new appeals in state and federal courts before the execution date, as is typical once a warrant is signed.

In the warrant, DeSantis wrote, as he has in prior warrants, that executive clemency was considered and that “it has been determined that executive clemency is not appropriate.”

A record pace

The Guardado warrant came days after DeSantis signed the 19th warrant of the year, for James Robertson, which tied the 2025 total for warrants. Robertson was already on death row when he strangled his cellmate, Frank Hart, at Charlotte Correctional Institution in 2008, and court records say he told investigators he killed Hart so that he would be sentenced to death.

Florida has dominated executions nationally this year. Its 16 executions account for more than half of the 29 carried out across the United States in 2026, according to a running national tally of executions.

The following executions are now scheduled in Florida, all at Florida State Prison near Raiford.

Thompson's execution is not certain to proceed. DeSantis signed an executive order temporarily pausing it and appointed three psychiatrists to evaluate Thompson, whose lawyers say he has severe dementia, is terminally ill and lacks the capacity to understand why he is being executed. If he is found competent, the Oct. 13 date would stand. If he is not, state law requires he be held in a Department of Corrections mental health facility until his competency is restored.

If all four scheduled executions are carried out, Florida would finish with at least 20 executions in 2026, surpassing last year's record.

What's next

Once a warrant is signed, the Florida Supreme Court typically sets an expedited schedule for any last-stage challenges, and any federal appeals would follow on a similarly compressed timeline. Guardado's case has already been through direct appeal, state postconviction review and federal habeas review, which narrows the issues his lawyers can raise.

Before Guardado's date arrives, the state is scheduled to carry out a rare double execution on Oct. 13 and another execution a week later, meaning Florida could carry out as many as four executions in a little more than three weeks.