Florida | After record-breaking year of executions, a growing sense of apathy among DR inmates and staff
After the state’s 19 executions in 2025, a record number, prisoners and staff alike have become increasingly numb to the routine act of state-sanctioned killing. The vibe around here is mostly the same on execution days. We used to be locked down; but not anymore, when there are sometimes up to two executions a month these days. The compound moves as it always has. Everybody here has been, and will be, here a long time; one gets used to these grim machinations.
Six executions have already been carried out in 2026. That number accounted for close to 60% of executions nationwide, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Roderick Orme, a death row resident, died in April. The old-timers who knew him said he painted and was quiet.
There is an undeniable emotional toll on those who have lived on death row and worked closest to it at Florida State Prison and neighboring Union Correctional, where I’m detained.
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Executions require officers, wardens and medical staff. If the prisoner requests it, there must also be spiritual advisors present to pray for them and offer support during the last moments of their lives.
My friend Cisco Porter spent 20 years on death row before his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
“Unless you’ve been on D row, nobody cares,” he said. “It’s not even on the news anymore.”
Hobie is a gentle giant who spent four years on death row. When I asked for his thoughts, he became uncharacteristically agitated. He said he feels sad on execution days, but that he always believed he wasn’t going to be executed.
Pauly, a military veteran who works on death row, said there is a cloud of desperation hanging over its residents.
“I hate going over there,” he told me. “They say the only reason they don’t kill themselves is that they don’t want the state to win. Once the [death] warrant is signed, they know they’re going to die. I have nightmares. I’m trying to get a job change. I don’t want to do that no more.”
Chief spent 20 years on death row. He is athletic with a shaved head. He says if he had been executed, he would have chosen dog food as his last meal.
“If you’re going to kill me like an animal, you might as well feed me like one,” he said. “Nobody cares, no one even knows someone is about to die.”
Outside the chapel, I asked an officer how he felt about the rash of executions. He said he felt neutral, then patted his chest and said, “Frank Walls did get to me.”
Walls was the last person put to death in 2025, after spending 37 years on death row. Walls’ attorneys filed motions to halt his execution, citing his intellectual disability and childhood brain damage.
In an essay for the Tampa Bay Times, Ron McAndrew wrote about his time as warden of Florida State Prison, where he was present inside the execution chamber during three executions. The experiences troubled him long after he left the department.
“I know what the state asks of the people inside its prisons when it insists on killing in our name,” he wrote in December. “And once that damage is done, there is no protocol that can undo it.”
Executions require officers, wardens and medical staff. If the prisoner requests it, there must also be spiritual advisors present to pray for them and offer support during the last moments of their lives.
My friend Cisco Porter spent 20 years on death row before his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
“Unless you’ve been on D row, nobody cares,” he said. “It’s not even on the news anymore.”
Hobie is a gentle giant who spent four years on death row. When I asked for his thoughts, he became uncharacteristically agitated. He said he feels sad on execution days, but that he always believed he wasn’t going to be executed.
Pauly, a military veteran who works on death row, said there is a cloud of desperation hanging over its residents.
“I hate going over there,” he told me. “They say the only reason they don’t kill themselves is that they don’t want the state to win. Once the [death] warrant is signed, they know they’re going to die. I have nightmares. I’m trying to get a job change. I don’t want to do that no more.”
Chief spent 20 years on death row. He is athletic with a shaved head. He says if he had been executed, he would have chosen dog food as his last meal.
“If you’re going to kill me like an animal, you might as well feed me like one,” he said. “Nobody cares, no one even knows someone is about to die.”
Outside the chapel, I asked an officer how he felt about the rash of executions. He said he felt neutral, then patted his chest and said, “Frank Walls did get to me.”
Walls was the last person put to death in 2025, after spending 37 years on death row. Walls’ attorneys filed motions to halt his execution, citing his intellectual disability and childhood brain damage.
In an essay for the Tampa Bay Times, Ron McAndrew wrote about his time as warden of Florida State Prison, where he was present inside the execution chamber during three executions. The experiences troubled him long after he left the department.
“I know what the state asks of the people inside its prisons when it insists on killing in our name,” he wrote in December. “And once that damage is done, there is no protocol that can undo it.”
Source: PJP, Eugene Landers, May 19, 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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