Florida’s execution pace tests the limits of the law

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

Comments

Japan: Capital punishment for a minor

Death chamber at Tokyo Detention Center The Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the death sentence given in a lay judge trial to a 24-year-old man for murders he committed when he was a minor raises questions about the lay judge trial system and capital punishment. These include whether the lay judges correctly understood the spirit of the Juvenile Law in sentencing the defendant to death. It was the 1st death sentence handed down on a minor in a lay judge trial. The murders took place in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 when Yutaro Chiba was 18 - meaning he fell under the purview of the Juvenile Law. Chiba was convicted of entering his ex-girlfriend's house and stabbing to death the girl's sister and a female friend of the girl with a butcher knife, seriously injuring a male friend of the sister and abducting the girl. Prosecutors said Chiba killed the victims because they were trying to separate him and his former girlfriend. Since Chiba pleaded n...

Saudi Arabia: Man beheaded for murder

April 27, 2010: Saudi authorities executed a man by beheading after he was sentenced to death for murder, the interior ministry announced. Saudi national Umair al-Shihri was put to death in the southern city of Bisha for shooting to death another Saudi, Muzakkir al Shahrani, with a machine gun, according to the announcement carried by the state news agency SPA. No details were given about the date or location of the crime, but the ministry said the execution had been put on hold until the victim's children came of age. Source: Agence France Presse, April 27, 2010

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Tennessee | Complaint accuses doctor involved in failed execution of violating medical ethics

A formal complaint has been filed with the Tennessee Department of Health regarding the conduct of a physician involved in the failed execution of death row inmate Tony Carruthers on May 21, 2026. The complaint, submitted by Carruthers’ sister, Tonya Hervey on July 15, alleges that Dr. Mark Walton Fowler engaged in unethical medical practices during the aborted procedure. The state’s attempt to execute Carruthers was halted after execution team members spent over an hour unsuccessfully attempting to establish a backup intravenous (IV) line. While a primary line was established, the team’s failure to secure the secondary access required by state protocol led Governor Bill Lee to grant a one-year reprieve.

Oldest inmate set to be executed in Florida will face strict spending limit for final meal

An entire category of food is also off-limits for final meal requests in Florida Florida is currently preparing to execute its oldest inmate later today (July 14), a 74-year-old convicted murderer who has been on death row since the 1980s—but his final meal will be limited by a strict budget. Dennis Sochor is scheduled to be put to death later today, making history as the oldest inmate to ever be executed in the state. The criminal, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, will be administered the lethal three-drug injection, with the process due to begin at around 6pm.

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Why America’s death rows are slowly emptying

The number of death sentences handed out by juries has plunged by more than 90% since the 1990s. On July 8, the Death Penalty Information Center, or DPIC, released its midyear update on capital punishment in the United States. Many of the findings were sadly, disturbingly familiar. For example, racial bias still plays a large role in who gets executed, and the Supreme Court continues to allow executions to proceed even when those being put to death have strong claims of innocence. But there was also encouraging news.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog