Two More Florida Execution Dates Set as the State Continues to Lead the Nation

Two more Florida executions are scheduled over the next month under death warrants signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, continuing a pace that has made the state a substantial outlier in American capital punishment. Curtis Beasley, 77, is scheduled for execution on September 29, and William Lee Thompson is scheduled for October 13 at Florida State Prison in Raiford, under a warrant signed September 11.

Beasley was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery, and grand theft in the 1995 death of 62-year-old Carolyn Monfort of Dundee in Polk County. According to court records described in news accounts, Monfort was bludgeoned with a hammer in the laundry room of her home. A jury in 1998 voted 10 to 2 to recommend a death sentence, and Beasley has spent more than 28 years on death row.

Thompson's warrant relates to a 1976 case, one of the long-standing capital cases moving toward execution dates in Florida this year. Both men were convicted and sentenced decades ago, which is typical of the Florida death row population.

Florida's position nationally

Florida executed William Silvia on August 18, the state's 13th execution of 2026, and according to the Death Penalty Information Center, Florida accounted for 13 of the nation's 23 executions in 2026 as of that period, more than the combined total of the five other states that had carried out executions.

That concentration is the defining fact of American capital punishment at present. Executions have declined in most states that retain the death penalty, with several imposing moratoriums and others simply not scheduling dates, while Florida has moved in the opposite direction.

The governor oversaw 19 executions in 2025, more in a single year than any Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated nationally in 1976. The previous state record had been eight, set in 2018.

How Florida's death warrant process works

In Florida, the governor holds the authority to sign a death warrant, which sets an execution date and initiates a defined legal sequence. The warrant directs the warden of Florida State Prison to carry out the sentence at a specified time.

Once a warrant is signed, the case moves on an accelerated schedule. The Florida Supreme Court sets a briefing and argument timeline for any successive postconviction claims, and federal courts handle any parallel federal habeas proceedings. The compressed timeline is a deliberate feature of the process.

Clemency authority rests with the governor and the Florida Cabinet sitting as the Board of Executive Clemency. Commutations of death sentences in Florida have been rare over the modern era.

Why these cases are decades old

Both scheduled executions involve crimes committed in the 1970s and 1990s, and that gap between sentence and execution is characteristic of capital cases nationally. The interval reflects the layered review that capital sentences receive.

Direct appeal to the Florida Supreme Court is automatic in capital cases. State postconviction proceedings follow, addressing claims such as ineffective assistance of counsel that could not be raised on direct appeal. Federal habeas review follows that, moving through the district court, the Eleventh Circuit, and potentially the United States Supreme Court.

Each stage takes years, and intervening changes in constitutional law can reopen questions thought settled. Florida's death row has been affected by several such changes, including United States Supreme Court decisions on jury findings in capital sentencing that required substantial reexamination of existing sentences.

The jury recommendation question

The 10 to 2 jury vote in Beasley's 1998 sentencing reflects a framework that has since changed more than once in Florida. For most of the modern era, Florida permitted a simple majority jury recommendation, with the judge making the ultimate sentencing determination.

Federal and state court decisions subsequently held that capital sentencing required jury findings, and Florida moved to a unanimity requirement. The state later changed its law again to permit death sentences on an eight to four jury vote, moving away from unanimity.

Whether a particular older sentence is affected by these changes depends on complex retroactivity rules, which courts have applied to define which prisoners may seek relief based on decisions handed down after their sentences became final. Those questions have been litigated extensively in Florida.

Method and procedure

Florida carries out executions by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford, with the statute also providing for electrocution if an inmate elects it. Executions are scheduled for 6 p.m., and the Department of Corrections follows established protocols for the process.

The state permits designated witnesses, including representatives of the victim's family, media representatives, and individuals designated by the condemned. Media witnesses provide the primary public account of what occurs, since executions are not otherwise open.

Florida has conducted multiple executions in a single day this year, including a double execution in July, which is unusual in American practice and reflects the scheduling pace the state has adopted.

The legal challenges

Defense counsel in warrant cases typically raise claims that may include intellectual disability, mental competence to be executed, newly discovered evidence, and challenges to the execution method. Each category has its own legal standard.

Competence to be executed is a constitutional requirement, and claims on that basis are evaluated under standards addressing whether a prisoner comprehends the punishment and the reason for it. Age and cognitive decline can be relevant, and Beasley is 77.

Courts reviewing warrant-period claims apply strict standards for successive postconviction petitions, which require showings that ordinarily prevent relitigation of previously decided issues. The success rate for such claims is low.

Arguments on both sides

Supporters of Florida's approach argue that sentences imposed by juries and affirmed through decades of appellate review should be carried out, that indefinite delay denies finality to victims' families, and that the state is fulfilling obligations the law places on it.

Opponents point to the risk of executing innocent people, noting that Florida has had more death row exonerations than any other state. They also raise concerns about disparities in who receives death sentences, about the adequacy of trial counsel in decades-old cases, and about executing people who have grown elderly or infirm on death row.

Both positions are represented in Florida, and public opinion on capital punishment has shifted nationally over recent decades, though support remains substantial. Florida retains one of the largest death row populations in the country.

The victims' families

Carolyn Monfort was 62 when she was killed in her home in Dundee in 1995. Cases that reach execution have families who have lived with the loss for decades and who have participated in successive court proceedings across that time.

Florida law provides victims' families with rights to notice, to be present, and to be heard at various stages, and the Department of Corrections coordinates family attendance at executions for those who choose to attend.

Research on families of homicide victims has found varied responses to executions, with some describing closure and others describing that the proceeding did not deliver what they had anticipated. Both responses appear across the literature.

The political dimension

The governor leaves office in January, and the pace of death warrants during his tenure has been a defining feature of his administration's criminal justice record. Whoever succeeds him inherits the warrant authority and the discretion over how to exercise it.

Byron Donalds and David Jolly are running effectively even in recent polling, and the governorship carries authority over capital punishment scheduling that operates largely outside legislative control. The office's discretion in this area is among the most significant unilateral powers a Florida governor holds.

Whether the pace continues under new leadership is genuinely uncertain, since it reflects a choice about how aggressively to use the warrant power rather than any legal requirement.

What it means for Floridians

For most residents, executions occur outside daily awareness, at a prison in rural North Florida, under procedures that receive limited coverage beyond the day itself. That distance is a feature of how capital punishment operates.

For Florida taxpayers, capital cases carry costs substantially exceeding those of cases seeking life sentences, driven by trial complexity, mandatory appellate review, and decades of postconviction litigation. Studies in multiple states have documented that differential.

For the state's legal system, warrant periods consume substantial court resources on an emergency basis, with the Florida Supreme Court and federal courts setting expedited schedules that displace other work.

The national picture

Executions in the United States have declined substantially from their peak in the late 1990s, when the annual national total ran near 100. The decline reflects fewer death sentences imposed, longer appellate timelines, difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs, and decisions by governors in several states to halt executions administratively.

That decline has made the remaining activity highly concentrated. A small number of states account for nearly all executions, and within those states the pace depends heavily on executive discretion about scheduling rather than on the size of the death row population.

Florida's death row remains among the largest in the country, which means the supply of cases eligible for warrants is not the constraint. What determines the pace is how many warrants are signed, and that is a choice made in the governor's office.

Exonerations and the error question

Florida has recorded more death row exonerations than any other state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, a fact that appears in nearly every serious discussion of capital punishment in the state.

The causes identified in those cases have included mistaken eyewitness identification, unreliable informant testimony, forensic evidence later shown to be flawed, and inadequate defense representation at trial. Each of those factors has been the subject of reform efforts, with varying success.

Supporters of capital punishment note that exonerations demonstrate the review system functioning, since the errors were caught before execution. Opponents note that several were caught through circumstances that were partly fortuitous, including the intervention of journalists and law students rather than the formal appellate process, and argue that the margin is thinner than the record suggests.

What's next

Beasley's execution is scheduled for September 29 and Thompson's for October 13, subject to any judicial stay. Litigation in warrant cases typically continues until shortly before the scheduled time, and stays, while uncommon, do occur.

Additional warrants may be signed before the governor leaves office in January. The pattern through 2025 and 2026 suggests continued activity, though each warrant is a discrete decision.

Florida's position as the source of a majority of American executions in 2026 is likely to draw continued national attention, and the trajectory after January will depend substantially on choices made by the state's next governor.