A man convicted of killing a traveling salesman he and his brother had met at a bar has become the 1st person executed in Florida this year.
Ronald Palmer Heath, 64, was pronounced dead at 6.12pm on Tuesday after a 3-drug injection at the Florida state prison near Starke. Heath was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery with a deadly weapon and other charges in the 1989 killing of Michael Sheridan.
Around 60 protesters gathered outside Florida State Prison on Tuesday evening, a larger crowd than is typical for executions. Joe Lakers, an Iowa resident, came to protest Heath’s execution with the Our Lady of Lourdes church from Daytona Beach.
“The state should not kill people,” he said as another protester sang “Amazing Grace” in the background. “There are other ways to punish people.”
Miriam Welly Elliott, coordinator of Gainesville Citizens for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, has been protesting Florida’s death penalty since the 1980s.
“We’re robbing people of an opportunity to be truly remorseful,” she said. “I just don’t think Jesus would support this.”
At 6 p.m., the scheduled time of execution, the protesters, one by one, hit a bell plastered with anti-death penalty messages. Meanwhile across the lawn, four people stood in an area designated for execution supporters — a difference from the usual one-man support.
Bill Campbell has driven to the prison from Marion County for almost every execution in the past year. He doesn’t pay attention to the details of the murders anymore because “they’re all the same,” he said.
Inside the prison, family members of the three victims believed to have been murdered by Ronald witnessed the execution. Following the execution, Michael Sheridan’s brother, Thomas Sheridan, spoke for more than 15 minutes at a press briefing.
He first thanked Gov. Ron DeSantis for “making this day happen,” saying his brother, Michael, never deserved what happened to him.
“Three beautiful young men's lives were snuffed out,” he said. “Ronald Heath can accurately be described as a serial killer.”
Kimberly Reeves, Anthony Hammett’s sister, also spoke at the press conference. Reeves said she hopes Heath was at peace when he died.
“Ronald has had appeal after appeal after appeal,” she said. “None of our brothers were ever able to appeal for their lives.”
It was the state’s first execution of 2026 and followed a record 19 executions in Florida last year. The state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1976. The previous Florida record, set in 2014, was 8 executions.
Killing a traveling salesman
According to court records, Heath and his brother Kenneth Heath met Sheridan at a Gainesville bar in May 1989. After hanging out at the bar for some time, the three men agreed to go somewhere else to smoke marijuana.
At some point, the brothers plotted to rob the other man, investigators said. Ronald Heath drove the group to a remote area, where Kenneth Heath pulled a handgun on Sheridan. The man initially refused to give the brothers anything, and Kenneth Heath shot Sheridan in the chest.
As Sheridan emptied his pockets, Ronald Heath began kicking the man and stabbing him with a hunting knife, prosecutors said. Kenneth Heath then shot Sheridan twice in the head.
The brothers dumped Sheridan’s body in a wooded area and returned to the Gainesville bar to take items from his rental car, according to the court record. It said the brothers made multiple purchases with Sheridan’s credit cards the next day at a Gainesville mall.
Ronald Heath was arrested several weeks later at his home in Douglas, Georgia, after investigators connected him to the stolen credit cards. Officers recovered clothing bought with the stolen cards, as well as Sheridan’s watch, according to court records.
Kenneth was arrested and entered a plea, agreeing to testify against his brother. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole after 25 years as part of a plea agreement.
Ronald went to trial in November 1990. Prosecutors presented evidence including items purchased with Sheridan’s credit cards and testimony from Kenneth.
His former cellmate, Wayburn Williams, testified Ronald told him he had plans to escape and kill two girls who could tie him to the murder.
The court found two aggravating circumstances supporting a death sentence: the murder was committed during a robbery, and he had a prior murder conviction.
Defense attorneys cited mitigating factors, including Ronald Heath’s substance use at the time of the crime, his good behavior in prison and the disparity between his sentence and his brother’s.
The court concluded Kenneth acted under Ronald’s domination, and the aggravating factors outweighed mitigation.
Ten of the 12 jurors recommended a death sentence.
Flurry of appeals
Heath filed several post-conviction appeals, including claims that Florida's legal injection protocol violated the Eighth Amendment. The Florida Supreme Court denied his final appeals on Feb. 3.
The Florida supreme court denied appeals filed by Ronald Heath last week. His attorneys had argued that Florida corrections officials had mismanaged the state’s own death penalty protocols, that the state’s secretive clemency process blocked due process, that Heath’s incarceration as a juvenile stunted his brain development and that jurors did not recommend the death penalty unanimously.
On Tuesday morning, the US supreme court denied Heath’s appeal.
Two more Florida executions have already been scheduled for later this month and next month. Melvin Trotter, 65, is scheduled to die on 24 February, and Billy Leon Kearse, 53, is set to be executed exactly a week later, on 3 March.
All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state’s department of corrections.
Heath becomes the first condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Florida and the 126th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on May 25, 1979. Only Texas (597) and Oklahoma (129) have carried out more executions since the US Supreme Court issued Gregg v Georgia, a ruling that effectively ended the de facto moratorium on capital punishment caused by Furman v. Georgia on June 29, 1972.
Heath becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,656th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Statement on the Execution of Ronald Heath
by Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
Tonight, We, the People of the State of Florida, executed Ronald “Ronnie” Heath for the 1989 murder of Michael Sheridan, marking the first execution of the year and continuing an execution spree that remains politicized, frantic, and disproportionate.
The undisputed trigger man in that crime, Ronnie’s brother Kenneth, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Ronnie was put to death for a murder he did not commit. The undisputed trigger man in that crime, Ronnie’s brother Kenneth, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. That means one day Kenneth may walk free on this earth, while Ronnie will be buried 6 feet under it.
Like many facing execution, Ronnie’s life tells a truth Florida refuses to confront. As a teenager, he was sent to a Florida adult prison, where he was repeatedly abused. The crime that sent him to prison as a teenager was the 2nd-degree murder of Michael Green, who Ronnie maintains he killed in self defense. Florida released him at 27 with no support, no treatment, and no resources and later acted shocked when he fell back into the cycle of violence.
This execution also forces an uncomfortable truth into the open: Not all victims are treated equally. Political pressure, optics, and lobbying dictate who lives and dies. Pain is ranked. Grief is weaponized. Families are manipulated and then discarded.
Florida is unique among death penalty states in that the governor alone decides who lives or dies — and when. That unchecked power has warped the entire process, leaving grieving families to believe they must fight for attention in order to be seen, heard, or honored. Under this administration’s execution spree, many victims’ families have been led to believe that justice — and even peace — will only come if their loved one’s case is selected next.
In Ronnie Heath’s case, family members of the victims sent a case of custom blue Sharpies to the governor, hoping to draw his attention and prompt the signing of a death warrant. This is not because those families are cruel or vindictive, but because they have been taught that this is how justice works in Florida. The governor has openly embraced the symbolism of his blue Sharpie, even tossing it into a crowd after signing pro–death penalty legislation.
When state killing is treated as spectacle, families are left feeling they must participate in that spectacle simply to be acknowledged. We understand the profound pain that drives this desperation. Many victims’ families are effectively held hostage by a system that tells them closure, dignity, and peace will only come through execution — even as experience shows that killing another human being rarely brings the healing they were promised. This is yet another way the death penalty causes harm. It retraumatizes families, distorts grief, and reduces the most solemn exercise of state power to a competition for attention. That damage belongs to the system — not to the families it has misled.
If 2026 matches the death toll of 2025, these rushed executions also bring a greater risk of a botched execution. The litigation beginning last year in Frank Walls’ case and continuing this year with the case of Ronnie Heath demonstrates 1 of 2 things: Florida is either lying about how it is administering its lethal injection protocol or it is abysmally inept at recordkeeping. Or both. Either way, the risk of torture is paramount.
We grieve for Michael Sheridan, the victim for which this death sentence is being carried out. We grieve for the other families, both named and unnamed, who feel Ronnie is the cause of their pain. We grieve for Ronnie’s mother, who will have to continue living without her son.
In nearly every letter he wrote while on death watch, Ronnie asks the same thing: “please look after my mother.” Even as his own life is being taken from him, his concern remains fixed on hers. The State may have ended Ronnie’s life, but it cannot erase the love of a son.
Tonight, Florida killed a man for a death he did not cause and in doing so created several more murder victims’ family members. And these new victims will never see their loved one’s killer brought to “justice.”
Sources: The Associated Press, Staff; Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, February 10, 2026
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
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