Death Penalty News

Man convicted of 2004 killing is put to death in Florida’s 19th execution this year, tying a record Florida carried out a record-tying 19th execution of the year in an unusual instance of 3 states administering the death penalty on the same day. Jesse Guardado was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at a state prison in Starke. He had pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing 75-year-old Jackie Malone inside her Walton County home in 2004 before stealing her jewelry box, $80, and other valuables to buy drugs. The woman had helped him get a job and housing.

An Indiana man who admitted killing his girlfriend's two children was executed early Thursday in the first of three lethal injections scheduled for the same day in the U.S. Jeffrey Weisheit killed the children, ages 8 and 5, by setting fire to his girlfriend's house in the Evansville area in 2010.  The remains of 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and 5-year-old Caleb Lynch were recovered from the ruins of a fire at their home in the Evansville area. Alyssa’s body was in a closet. Caleb’s body was on a mattress, restrained with duct tape. A railroad flare was in his underwear, and another was under his body. The children’s mother, Lisa Lynch, was at work at the time. She was in a relationship with Weisheit, but it was breaking down, investigators said. Weisheit spent 13 years on death row after his conviction. Weisheit died at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. The lethal injection started just after midnight, and he was pronounced dead at 12:45 a.m., according to Noelle Russell, ...

If all three executions are carried out as planned, it will be the second triple execution in the U.S. this year, reflecting an overall uptick in the death penalty since the beginning of 2025. Three states are planning to carry out a rare triple execution this week on Nov. 5. Indiana is set to execute Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, by lethal injection for the 2010 murders of his girlfriend's two children, 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and her 5-year-old brother, Caleb. The children were burned alive in their home.

Indiana’s governor turned down a clemency request and says an execution planned for Thursday will go forward against a man who killed his girlfriend’s two children in 2010 Indiana's governor turned down a clemency request Monday and said an execution planned for this week would go forward for a man who set a fire that killed his girlfriend's two children in 2010. Gov. Mike Braun said he would follow the Indiana Parole Board's recommendation to let the death sentence stand for Jeffrey Weisheit. “The Indiana Department of Correction will continue preparations to carry out the court-ordered sentence of execution” Thursday, said Braun, a Republican.

Gov. Mike Braun is still weighing Jeffrey Weisheit’s clemency request, however. Gov. Mike Braun’s administration will not allow death row inmate Jeffrey Weisheit to undergo additional brain scans before his scheduled execution next week. The decision follows weeks of legal efforts by his attorneys to obtain additional medical evidence for his clemency case. Braun’s general counsel, Stephanie Flittner, met with Weisheit’s legal team Wednesday to discuss the testing and his pending clemency request.

Indiana prison officials plan to proceed with Jeffrey Weisheit’s Nov. 5 execution after a botched lethal injection in Tennessee prompted that state’s governor to halt executions and order an independent review. The Indiana Department of Correction said Thursday that it remains confident in its procedures despite using the same protocol as Tennessee. Agency officials offered no additional details about the training of those administering lethal injections, the role of medical personnel, or safeguards for execution drugs.

Georgia prison physician Carlo Musso was one of the rare doctors who’d openly talked about his role in lethal injections . After he stepped away from that work last decade, the state has made it difficult to determine who replaced him. The role Musso held is so controversial that more than a dozen states have made it illegal to disclose the names of those involved with lethal injections. Georgia is among them. The state, through its Lethal Injections Secrecy Act, has gone to great lengths to hide the details around how it carries out lethal injections.

The court’s decision came a little more than two months after Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita asked the justices to schedule Weisheit’s execution. State attorneys argued Weisheit had exhausted his state and federal appeals, had no active stay of execution, and could lawfully be put to death. The inmate’s attorneys opposed setting a date, saying they needed more time to pursue available legal proceedings and possible executive clemency. The defense additionally pointed to public records that it said showed the Indiana Department of Correction lacked the drugs needed to conduct an execution and had no lawful source from which to obtain them.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Gov. Mike Braun said the future of the death penalty will be up to state lawmakers.  “It’s not an easy conversation,” Gov. Braun said during a July 2 news conference when asked about the future of Indiana’s death penalty.  There are five men on Indiana’s death row. The Attorney General’s Office is currently requesting an execution date for Jeffrey Weisheit, a death row inmate convicted of murdering two young children in 2010.  The state has put three men to death over the last 18 months since it resumed executions under former Gov. Eric Holcomb. All by lethal injection.

Indiana law says that the press has no right to be present when the state carries out executions. It limits those who can attend to the warden of the prison where the execution is carried out, immediate family members of the crime victim, no more than five friends or relatives of the convicted person, the prison physician, and the prison chaplain. Only if an inmate selects a member of the press as one of the five friends may they attend.

Correction officials confirmed Westville can accommodate firing squad executions as lawmakers, the governor, and the U.S. Justice Department push for changes to protocols. As Indiana inches toward what could be its fourth state execution since resuming capital punishment, prison officials confirmed the state’s next correctional complex is already equipped for an execution method Hoosier lawmakers have yet to authorize. The Indiana Department of Correction confirmed to the Indiana Capital Chronicle that the new Westville Correctional Facility, now nearing completion, is designed to accommodate both lethal injection and firing squad executions. Indiana law currently allows only lethal injection.

The use of the death penalty has risen sharply in the United States, with more executions in 2025 than any year since 2009. It is a cruel and unjust development. In theory, the death penalty is reserved for “the worst of the worst.” In practice, it is very different. People who are executed for their crimes are disproportionately poor or intellectually disabled and often lacked good lawyers. They are also more likely to be sentenced to death if they have been convicted of killing a white person. Anthony Boyd, who maintained his innocence until Alabama executed him last year at age 54, had an inexperienced court-appointed lawyer and was convicted on disputed eyewitness testimony. Charles Flores, 56, has spent 27 years on death row in Texas for a murder conviction based solely on unreliable testimony from a hypnotized witness. Robert Roberson, who has autism, remains on death row there despite having been convicted on now-debunked evidence that he had shaken his daughter to death.

The Missouri House is moving forward with legislation that eliminates allowing a judge to sentence someone to death in the case of a deadlocked jury. House members gave first-round approval to the legislation last week. It is likely to pass the chamber this week. Missouri is one of two states where, if a jury is deadlocked on whether to sentence someone to death, the judge can issue the death penalty. Indiana is the other. The bill removes that ability.

(INDIANA CAPITAL CHRONICLE) — New records from the governor’s office show Indiana paid $100,000 for execution drugs used in October — bringing the total amount the state has spent on pentobarbital to at least $1.275 million — and reveal how long lethal injection drugs remained in state custody before being used or destroyed. The documents, provided Monday to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, include a previously undisclosed Department of Correction drug inventory log that tracks purchases, use, and disposal of pentobarbital over the past two years. 

The Indiana Catholic Conference (ICC) is hailing positive developments at the midpoint of the legislative session, including the rejection of a push to introduce execution by firing squad as a means of capital punishment.  Following impassioned debate on the House floor, a bill that would have added this controversial method of carrying out the death penalty in Indiana was defeated in a close vote. Rep. Bob Morris (R-Fort Wayne), a Catholic lawmaker who last year introduced legislation to abolish the death penalty altogether, was among those appealing to his colleagues to vote no on House Bill 1119. 

After an attempt to add firing squads to Indiana law stalled in the Senate, a House panel on Wednesday passed a bill expanding the state’s execution methods.  Firing squad and nitrogen hypoxia would be allowed alongside lethal injection to carry about Indiana’s death penalty under a bill that passed 8-5 out of the House Courts and Criminal Code Committee.  House Bill 1119 was amended and now moves to the full chamber. Under the measure, it would be up to the Indiana Department of Correction to choose the manner of execution and state employees could not be forced to participate. 

A Senate panel heard testimony but delayed a vote until next week. A bill that would allow executions by firing squad if lethal injection drugs are unavailable or at an inmate’s request is fueling ongoing debates over secrecy, drug costs and “humane” methods of capital punishment. Senators on the Corrections and Criminal Law Committee spent an hour probing Republican Sen. Mike Young’s Senate Bill 11 — and some questioned whether it’s necessary at all — but no vote was held.

A state law shields its source of pentobarbital, the sedative used in lethal injections. But documents reviewed by NBC News offer a glimpse into its most recent supply. Texas, which historically drives the number of executions nationwide, is approaching a grim milestone of 600 people put to death by lethal injection since the early 1980s. But for the past 10 years, a shield statute meant to protect the safety of those participating in the execution protocol has allowed the state to withhold a telling piece of information: where Texas is finding pentobarbital, the hard-to-get drug it exclusively uses to carry out executions.

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. — At 12:01 a.m. CDT, the time proscribed by court order to begin the execution of Roy Lee Ward, a small crowd gathered in the parking lot across the street from the Indiana State Prison to stand witness as a neighbor blared Johnny Cash’s “25 Minutes to Go” from stereo speakers set up across the way. Ward had been a resident of the state’s Death Row in Michigan City since 2002 after his conviction for the killing of 15-year-old Stacy Payne in Dale, Indiana, the year before. He was executed by injection. During a clemency hearing last month, first responders testified that the slashing murder of the teenager was the most horrific they had ever seen.

State officials have not yet disclosed how much was paid for the latest round of execution drugs, however.  Condemned man Roy Lee Ward has withdrawn the final 2 federal lawsuits that sought to delay his execution, effectively guaranteeing that his death sentence will be carried out before sunrise Friday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Ward’s decision ends months of last-minute litigation over how Indiana carries out executions and the lethal injection drugs the state uses. The dismissals close the window for courts to intervene, with the exception of last-minute relief from the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation’s high court justices denied such efforts ahead of the state’s previous 2 executions.