Florida’s execution pace tests the limits of the law — and its workforce

When something goes wrong, prison staff absorb the consequences.

Florida’s execution pace is testing the limits of the law — and its workforce. I spent years inside Florida’s execution chamber as warden of Florida State Prison, personally overseeing three executions. I know what it takes to carry out a death sentence, and it permanently changed my view of capital punishment. That experience is why a recent lawsuit filed by death row inmate Frank Walls in advance of his scheduled execution Thursday should concern every Floridian.

Walls’ suit challenges how Florida is currently administering lethal injections, not as a hypothetical protocol, but as a real-world process carried out at an unprecedented pace. Florida has already executed eighteen people in 2025. Walls is scheduled to be the nineteenth. That pace matters, because executions depend on human beings performing complex, high-risk tasks under extreme pressure.

Walls’ lawsuit alleges serious failures in the handling of execution drugs. According to the filings, the Florida Department of Corrections has poorly maintained pharmacy logs, inconsistently documented how drugs are prepared and administered, and used lower-than-required doses at least twice this year. The suit also raises concerns about drugs that expired before they were used in four separate executions.

These are not minor paperwork issues. Florida’s lethal injection protocol relies on precise dosing to ensure the first drug renders a person fully unconscious before the remaining drugs cause paralysis and cardiac arrest. This process is troublesome to begin with. If that process breaks down — because of degraded drugs, improper dosages, or sloppy documentation — a person may experience extreme pain while unable to move or communicate. The U.S. Constitution forbids that. Walls’ lawsuit asks whether Florida’s current practices meaningfully protect against it.

What the legal briefs do not fully capture is how easily such failures can occur when executions are scheduled back-to-back. Executions are not automated. They require correctional officers, supervisors, and medical personnel to prepare drugs, verify records, monitor consciousness, and respond if something goes wrong. When warrants pile up, staff have less time to review procedures, double-check documentation, or recover from the last execution before being asked to carry out the next one.

I have seen the toll this takes. When something goes wrong in an execution chamber, it is not elected officials who absorb the consequences. It is prison staff. They are the ones who must notice signs of consciousness. They are the ones who must decide whether to speak up. They are the ones who carry the memories long after the chamber is cleaned and the state moves on. Florida’s leaders often talk about executions as proof of toughness or efficiency. They do not talk about the strain placed on the workforce they rely on, or the increased risk of error when speed replaces care.This makes the continued push for executions all the more troubling because Florida already has an alternative. Life without parole exists. It protects public safety. It avoids irreversible error. And it allows correctional professionals to do their jobs without being turned into executioners in a system that demands perfection under impossible conditions.

Frank Walls’ lawsuit is not an inconvenience. It is a warning. It asks whether Florida can continue killing on a schedule without cutting constitutional corners — and without breaking the people it asks to carry out those deaths.I have lived with the consequences of executions. I know what the state asks of the people inside its prisons when it insists on killing in our name.

Florida should listen to what this lawsuit is telling us.

Because when the machinery starts to break down, it does not only harm the condemned. It harms everyone trapped inside it.

And once that damage is done, there is no protocol that can undo it.

Ron McAndrew is a former warden of Florida State Prison.

Source: tampabay.com, Ron McAndrew, Opinion, December 17, 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