DeSantis Signs Death Warrant for Ricardo Gonzalez in 1992 Killing of North Miami Officer Steven Bauer

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, signed a death warrant for Ricardo Gonzalez, who was convicted of murdering North Miami police Officer Steven Bauer during a 1992 bank robbery. Gonzalez, 56, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, Dec. 1, at Florida State Prison in Raiford. If the two executions already scheduled for November proceed, he would be the 21st person put to death in Florida this year, surpassing the state record of 19 executions set in 2025.

Bauer, 39, was a 12-year veteran of the North Miami Police Department who grew up in the city and was a father of three. He was shot as he escorted bank tellers to their stations at Kislak National Bank on Jan. 3, 1992. Gonzalez has been on death row for more than three decades, through two penalty-phase trials and a long run of state and federal appeals.

The robbery and the killing

According to court records and the Miami Herald's archives, five men planned the robbery of the bank at 13490 NW Seventh Ave. for days. They stole two gray Chevrolet Caprices to confuse witnesses, cased the bank and assigned each man a role. The heist began around 7:50 a.m., about 10 minutes before opening.

Bauer, in uniform, was escorting two tellers to their drive-in stations when the men confronted him. He reached for his gun, but Gonzalez and co-defendant Leonardo Franqui fired first, according to the Herald's reporting. Franqui fired a 9mm handgun; Gonzalez fired once with a revolver, and the shot he fired was found to be the one that struck Bauer's heart. Gonzalez later told police he had shot low and thought he had only wounded the officer, according to USA Today Network reporting on the court record. Another member of the group grabbed a cash tray holding about $17,000, and the men fled, leaving the stolen cars two blocks away.

"Officer Bauer did not stand a chance," North Miami Police Chief Kenneth Each said at the time, according to the Herald. "It's a cold, vicious killing. Totally, totally premeditated."

The break in the case came when a priest called police with a tip that one of the men, Fernando Fernandez, had confessed. The men were arrested within weeks and gave detectives detailed confessions. The guns were recovered from a canal.

The co-defendants

Five men were prosecuted for Bauer's murder, and their sentences diverged:

• Leonardo Franqui, who fired the 9mm, was sentenced to death and remains on Florida's death row. He also received a death sentence for the killing of Raul Lopez, 46, during a Hialeah robbery a month before the bank heist.
• Pablo San Martin, who helped steal the cars and grabbed the cash tray, was initially sentenced to death for Bauer's murder, but the Florida Supreme Court vacated that sentence and he received life. He was separately sentenced to death in the Lopez case.
• Fernando Fernandez, who also helped steal the cars, had his death sentence vacated and received life; state prison records list him as deceased.
• Pablo Abreu, a getaway driver, pleaded guilty and is serving life.

How the case moved through the courts

Federal court records filed with a 2018 petition to the U.S. Supreme Court lay out the case history.

The 1997 ruling turned on the trial's use of statements by Franqui and San Martin. The Florida Supreme Court found that admitting the co-defendants' confessions was harmless as to guilt but could not be considered harmless at sentencing, so it sent the case back for a new penalty phase. At the 1998 resentencing, the judge found aggravating factors including that the murder was committed during a robbery and for financial gain, to avoid arrest, and against a law enforcement officer performing his duties. He weighed those against mitigation that included no significant prior criminal history, brain damage and a learning disability, remorse and cooperation with authorities. Defense witnesses had testified about head injuries from Gonzalez's years as a boxer.

In 2018, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court's 2016 Hurst decision, which led Florida to require unanimous jury recommendations for a time, did not apply to Gonzalez because his sentence became final in 2001. Florida law has since been changed again, and it now allows a death sentence on a recommendation of 8 of 12 jurors, the margin in Gonzalez's resentencing.

Florida's record execution pace

Florida executed a record 19 people in 2025. It has carried out 18 executions so far in 2026, accounting for 18 of the 32 executions nationwide, according to the Death Penalty Information Center as cited by the USA Today Network. The warrant came less than two weeks after the state executed William Reaves Jr. for the 1986 murder of Deputy Richard Raczkoski.

Two executions are scheduled ahead of Gonzalez's. Jesse Guardado, condemned for the 2004 killing of 75-year-old community activist Jackie Malone, is set for Nov. 5. Thomas Overton, condemned for the 1991 murders of Susan and Michael MacIvor in the Florida Keys, is set for Nov. 19. The Florida Press has covered both cases separately. DeSantis also canceled a scheduled execution in October, that of William Thompson, after his attorneys raised concerns about his mental capacity, the Herald reported.

DeSantis has defended the accelerated pace as a matter of justice for victims' families who have waited decades. "I felt that I owed it to (victims' families) to make sure that this ran very smoothly and promptly," he said at a past news conference, as quoted by the USA Today Network.

What's next

Under the governor's warrant, the Florida Supreme Court sets an expedited schedule for any final appeals, and Gonzalez's lawyers can raise new claims in the Miami-Dade circuit court and then seek stays from the state and federal high courts. Barring a stay, he would be executed on Dec. 1, nearly 35 years after Steven Bauer was killed at a North Miami bank on his way to helping tellers open for the day.