Florida | Military vets are third of inmates executed in Florida this year, report finds

A new report finds that five of the 15 people executed in Florida this year were military veterans.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is defending his modern-era record for executions this year, saying he is bringing justice to the families of victims.

But a new report reveals some troubling data: Five of the 15 convicted murderers executed this year in Florida were military veterans.

Two more inmates who served also are scheduled to die over the next two weeks. Bryan Jennings, a former Marine, is set to be executed Nov. 13, followed by Richard Randolph, an Army veteran, on Nov. 20.

Florida has overseen two-thirds of the executions and scheduled executions of veterans in 2025, according to the report by the Death Penalty Information Center.

“Our research shows that the military service of capital defendants is often minimized or forgotten, even when the experience has been life altering,” says Robin Maher, executive director of the center, whose report – "Forgotten Service, Lasting Wounds" – was released Nov. 10, a day before Veterans Day.

The report includes findings that a “battlefield-to-prison” pipeline exists for a substantial minority of those executed in the U.S.

Mental health care shortages for veterans

Concerns have mounted amid a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general’s report in August, which found severe staffing shortages across its hospitals. President Trump’s administration has dismissed the findings as “subjective.”

A ProPublica review last year of all reports published by the VA’s inspector general since 2020 showed that issues with veterans having trouble accessing mental health care were cited in more than half of the over 300 investigations and surveys.

Florida is second only to Texas as home to the largest veterans' population in the U.S., according to Florida's Department of Veterans' Affairs.

According to the non-partisan Council on Criminal Justice, the physical and psychological hazards of military service can be “significantly associated with a greater likelihood of criminal justice system involvement among veterans.”

Jeffrey Hutchinson, executed in May at Florida State Prison, was a Gulf War veteran convicted in the 1998 shooting deaths of his girlfriend and her three children in the Panhandle city of Crestview.

A letter from 129 veterans argued that Hutchinson's mind was a casualty of war. At his trial, psychologists supported the theory that Hutchinson, an Army Ranger from 1986 through 1994, may have suffered chemical exposure and concussive blasts that damaged his brain.

His trial judge, however, agreed with two prosecution psychologists who concluded there was no correlation between Hutchinson's diagnosis and the murders.

DeSantis on track to more than double Florida's execution record

Hutchinson is among a record number of Florida inmates executed this year. DeSantis is on track to more than double the state’s previous annual record of eight executions in 1984 and 2014, when Democrat Bob Graham and now-U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican, were the governors signing death warrants.

DeSantis, during a Nov. 3 appearance in Jacksonville, cited his decision to move ahead with more executions in his second-to-last year as governor. He said the death penalty is “an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders.”

There are 256 inmates on Florida’s Death Row. One inmate, Robert Peede, 81, died in July while awaiting his sentence to be carried out. He’d been on Death Row more than four decades.

“We have lengthy reviews and appeals that I think should be shorter,” said DeSantis, a Navy veteran. “I still have a responsibility to look at these cases and to be sure that the person's guilty. And if I honestly thought somebody wasn't, I would not pull the trigger on it.”

Florida since 1972 has sentenced at least 117 veterans to death — more than any other state and accounting for nearly 15% of the 807 veterans sentenced nationwide, the DPIC report found. At least 226 military veterans have been executed across the nation over that time — 14% of all people executed in the modern era, according to the report.

Military service part of death row appeals

Military service and trauma are typically presented as mitigating factors in court and clemency appeals. But their legal weight varies by case and is usually analyzed during the lengthy appeals process that accompanies death sentences.

Studies have shown that military experience is often part of a Death Row inmate’s life that's already been marked by severe childhood trauma, abuse, and neglect.

Florida’s most recent execution was Oct. 28, when Navy veteran Norman Grim, 65, died by lethal injection at Florida State Prison. Grim was convicted of sexual battery and first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1998 killing of a Santa Rosa County woman who was his neighbor.

The 16th execution DeSantis has set for this year is Jennings, 66. He was convicted of raping and killing a 6-year-old girl in 1979 after entering through a window and abducting her from her Brevard County home.

Randolph, 63, is set to become Florida's 17th execution this year. He was convicted of the 1988 rape and fatal beating of his former manager at a Putnam County convenience store.

Death penalty opponents say convicted veterans deserve better treatment.

“These men are worthy of mercy because of their service and these executions are unnecessary,” said Abe Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action. “We can hold them accountable with severe punishment and be safe without killing them.

“We know this because that’s what we do in the vast majority of capital murder cases,” Bonowitz said.

Source: USA Today, John Kennedy, November 10, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Comments

California | Becerra vows to extend moratorium despite past support for capital punishment

SACRAMENTO—Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor, he has vowed to block executions if elected in November. Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”

California | He spent 19 years on death row. His conversion to Judaism helped him endure

Johnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin. Hands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm. For almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this—chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.

Florida executes Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’ A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Iran | Afghan Citizen Executed in Wheelchair Due to Severe Mobility Disability

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iranian authorities have reportedly executed an Afghan citizen, identified as Valijan Nourzay, at the central prison in Rafsanjan, according to the human rights organization Hengaw. Hengaw said in a statement on Sunday, September 6, that Nourzay was executed early Wednesday last week at Rafsanjan Central Prison. According to the organization, Nourzay had a severe mobility disability and was executed while in a wheelchair. Hengaw, citing informed sources, reported that Nourzay had been pursued by Iranian authorities three years ago over an alleged murder. He was reportedly seriously wounded after Iranian security forces opened fire on him in Rafsanjan before being arrested and later sentenced to death.

Singapore | Ministry of Home Affairs refutes claims that death penalty was discussed during visit by Israel's security ministry

The Ministry of Home Affairs says discussions with the Israeli government involved the sharing of best practices in emergency response, crime prevention, and forensics. Issues relating to the death penalty “were never part of the meeting and were not discussed." SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday (Sep 11) refuted claims by an Israeli media outlet that the death penalty was discussed during a visit by an Israeli delegation in May. The Haaretz newspaper reported on Sep 7 that a delegation comprising representatives from the Israel Prison Service and National Security Ministry made a “secret visit” to Singapore that month.

Afghanistan | Signs that horrific brutality is set to return

Kneeling next to a ditch, deep in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, a 22-year-old woman draws her last breath in a 'desert court' before she is shot in the back with an AK-47. Her executioner? Likely her hardline militant husband, in what the Taliban consider an 'honour killing'. It took less than an hour to decide Najiba had been adulterous – although it has been suggested this accusation was fabricated to protect her husband's reputation. Adultery is a crime that deserves capital punishment under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Sharia law. Fourteen years on from her death, little is known about her story, like many women slowly being erased from the fabric of Afghan society.

Florida to execute William Thompson after nearly 48 years on death row

On Sept. 11, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a death warrant for William Thompson, convicted of the 1976 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 23-year-old Sally Ivester. Thompson, now 74, and another man were staying in a Miami Beach hotel room with Ivester and another woman, according to court records. After Ivester was unable to get money from her mother, the men beat and tortured her, prosecutors said. She died from internal bleeding and multiple injuries. Thompson was convicted in 1978 of kidnapping, rape, and first-degree murder.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

Thailand | Killer of hotel receptionist sentenced to death

Hua Hin Provincial Court has sentenced a man accused of killing and robbing a hotel employee in January to death, ruling that the crime was so serious and shocking that there were no grounds for leniency despite his guilty plea. The court handed down the sentence on Tuesday in a case involving the killing of a hotel employee during a robbery in Hua Hin district of Prachuap Khiri Khan province.

Egypt TV presenter and 11 others sentenced to death in major drugs case

Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa and 11 others have been sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of drug trafficking and rape, while nine defendants received life sentences and seven were acquitted. Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa, 39, has been sentenced to death by hanging along with 11 other defendants after being found guilty in a drugs case involving a criminal gang accused of importing ingredients used to manufacture narcotics for sale.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog