Florida Set to Execute Curtis Beasley, 77, Tonight for 1995 Polk County Hammer Killing

Florida is scheduled to execute Curtis Wilkie Beasley Sr., a 77-year-old U.S. Army veteran, at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison for the August 1995 beating death of 62-year-old Carolyn Monfort in her Dundee home in Polk County. If the lethal injection proceeds, it will be Florida's 16th execution of 2026, keeping the state on a pace that could rival last year's modern-day record of 19 executions.

Beasley's attorneys have taken their final constitutional challenges to the U.S. Supreme Court after the Florida Supreme Court rejected his appeal and refused to halt the execution in an unsigned opinion issued last week. The state's high court upheld a Polk County circuit judge's summary denial of Beasley's successive motion for postconviction relief, along with his request for an emergency stay.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Beasley's death warrant on Aug. 26, setting the Sept. 29 date. Beasley was convicted in February 1998 of first-degree murder, robbery and grand theft auto, and a jury voted 10 to 2 later that year to recommend a death sentence. He has spent roughly three decades in the state's prison system since the killing.

The 1995 killing in Dundee

According to court records and case summaries published since the warrant was signed, Beasley had been staying at Monfort's home in Dundee, a small town in eastern Polk County south of Orlando, in August 1995. He was an acquaintance of the family and was doing pressure washing and painting work at nearby apartments owned by Monfort's son-in-law.

On Aug. 21, 1995, Monfort was killed in the laundry room of her home. Beasley was 46 at the time. Investigators determined that she suffered severe blunt-force trauma, with 15 to 17 blows to her head and face that were consistent with a hammer. The head of a hammer, wrapped in two dish towels, was found broken from its handle near her body.

Authorities began searching for Beasley after a witness reported seeing him driving what turned out to be Monfort's car. At trial, prosecutors said Beasley took money from Monfort and drove her car to South Florida, where he later boarded a bus and left the state.

Beasley was eventually located in Alabama, where, according to published accounts of the case, he was living at a motel under an alias and working for an electrical company under a false name. He was returned to Florida to face charges in Polk County.

Conviction and the 10-2 death recommendation

A Polk County jury found Beasley guilty in February 1998 of first-degree murder, robbery and grand theft. In the penalty phase that followed, jurors voted 10 to 2 to recommend that he be sentenced to death, and the court imposed that sentence.

During a hearing in the case, Beasley told the judge that he did not kill Monfort and did not steal her car or her money, according to reports on the court record. His denial did not persuade the jury or the courts that reviewed the case over the following decades.

The nonunanimous jury recommendation has become one of the central issues in his final appeals. Florida's rules on death recommendations have shifted repeatedly since Beasley's trial. At the time of his sentencing, Florida law allowed a death recommendation by a simple majority of jurors, with the judge making the final findings.

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hurst v. Florida that the state's sentencing scheme violated the Sixth Amendment because it gave judges, not juries, the key fact-finding role. The Florida Supreme Court then held that death recommendations must be unanimous, and the Legislature wrote unanimity into law. But the Florida Supreme Court applied that change only to cases that were not yet final in 2002, leaving older cases like Beasley's under the prior rules.

The state court reversed course in 2020, receding from its unanimity requirement, and in 2023 the Legislature lowered the threshold so that a recommendation from 8 of 12 jurors is enough for a death sentence. The change followed the jury's life sentence recommendation for the Parkland school shooter, and it gave Florida the lowest bar among states that use capital punishment.

Beasley's attorneys argued that his sentence, resting on a jury vote in which two jurors did not agree he should die, is constitutionally flawed. The Florida Supreme Court rejected that claim, as it has in a series of warrant cases involving nonunanimous juries from the era before the 2016 changes.

What the Florida Supreme Court decided

In its per curiam opinion, the Florida Supreme Court turned aside each of the claims Beasley raised in the Polk County circuit court. The most prominent was an argument that executing a 77-year-old man who is experiencing cognitive decline, memory problems and depression would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The justices rejected that argument, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has established an age-based bar on execution only for crimes committed by juveniles under 18. Legal commentary on the ruling has summarized its holding as finding that age and cognitive decline do not create an as-applied exemption from execution under the conformity clause in Florida's Constitution, which ties the state's interpretation of cruel and unusual punishment to U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

The court also dismissed Beasley's challenge to the length of the warrant period. His lawyers argued that the tight window between the signing of the warrant and the execution date hampered the defense team and deprived him of due process. The court found no basis for relief on that point, consistent with its rulings in other recent warrant cases.

Finally, the court rejected the challenge to the 10-2 jury recommendation, leaving the sentence intact and clearing the way for the execution to go forward as scheduled.

The last appeal to Washington

With the state courts exhausted, Beasley's lawyers have filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, where the matter is docketed as Beasley v. Florida, No. 26A405. According to reporting on the petition, the defense raises four core constitutional claims.

One claim targets the way Florida chooses which prisoners to execute. The petition argues that the governor's selection process is arbitrary and capricious because the executive branch can designate death row inmates for execution without offering formal criteria or any explanation for why certain prisoners are chosen over others who have been on death row longer.

Another claim renews the argument that the Eighth Amendment should bar Beasley's execution because of an acute onset of age-related cognitive deficits. According to the brief, as described in published reports, his mental state began noticeably deteriorating in March 2026.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to intervene in every Florida execution carried out since the state resumed an accelerated schedule in 2025. Unless the justices act before the scheduled time, the execution is expected to proceed Tuesday evening.

Florida's historic pace of executions

Beasley's case is the latest in a sustained run of death warrants under DeSantis. In 2025, Florida carried out 19 executions, shattering the state's modern-era record, and the pace has continued into 2026. Tuesday's execution would be the 16th in Florida this year, with the fall calendar still ahead.

Florida uses a three-drug lethal injection protocol, and executions take place at Florida State Prison in Raiford, near Starke in Bradford County. Condemned prisoners are moved to a death watch cell after a warrant is signed, and the governor's office sets the date, typically about a month out.

That compressed timeline is at the heart of recurring legal complaints from defense attorneys, who say 30 or so days is not enough to investigate and litigate new claims for a prisoner whose case may be decades old. State courts have consistently found that the warrant schedule does not violate due process.

Groups opposed to capital punishment, including Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, have drawn attention to Beasley's age and his status as an Army veteran as the execution approaches. The state has not signaled any change in course, and DeSantis has consistently framed the warrants he signs as a matter of carrying out lawful sentences for victims' families.

Why Beasley's age draws attention

At 77, Beasley is older than most prisoners Florida has executed. His case adds to a national debate about aging death row populations, as prisoners sentenced in the 1980s and 1990s grow elderly while their appeals wind through state and federal courts.

Defense lawyers across the country have tried to extend the logic of U.S. Supreme Court decisions barring the execution of people with intellectual disabilities or those who are legally incompetent to cover prisoners with dementia or late-life cognitive decline. Courts have generally required proof that a prisoner cannot rationally understand why he is being executed, a high bar that age alone does not meet.

Florida law provides a separate procedure for claims that a condemned prisoner is insane to be executed, handled through the governor and a commission of psychiatrists. Published reporting on Beasley's appeals has focused on the Eighth Amendment age and cognitive claims rather than a formal insanity-to-be-executed finding.

For Polk County, the case recalls a killing that shocked a small community more than 30 years ago. Dundee, a town of a few thousand people along the Ridge between Haines City and Lake Wales, was the setting for a crime in which a 62-year-old woman was killed in her own home by a man she had taken in while he worked nearby.

What's next

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court or the governor intervenes, Beasley is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison. The Department of Corrections typically announces the time of death after the procedure, and the governor's office confirms when an execution has been carried out.

If the execution proceeds, Florida will have carried out 16 executions in 2026, with further warrants possible before the end of the year. The state would need several more to match or pass the 2025 record of 19.

The Florida Press will update this story after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on Beasley's pending application and after the scheduled execution time.