Ron DeSantis has taken Florida in a direction no other governor dared go.
The numbers don't lie about what he's done.
And Ron DeSantis just set one execution record that has the Left outraged.
DeSantis Signs Death Warrant That Continues Florida's Historic Execution Pace
Governor Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for Melvin Trotter, 65, to be executed by lethal injection on February 24.
Trotter was convicted of the brutal 1986 murder of 70-year-old Virgie Langford, who owned a grocery store in Palmetto.
A truck driver found Langford bleeding on the floor with seven stab wounds and a massive abdominal injury that disemboweled her.
She told the driver Trotter stabbed and robbed her before she died hours later from cardiac arrest after emergency surgery.
Trotter left behind his bloody handprint on a meat cooler and police found a T-shirt with Langford's blood at his home.
He wore a Tropicana employee badge with "Melvin" on it during the attack.
This will be Florida's second execution in February after Ronald Palmer Heath is put to death on February 10.
DeSantis is maintaining the same brutal pace from 2025 when Florida executed two inmates every month from May through December.
Florida Shattered Every Execution Record in 2025
DeSantis oversaw 19 executions in 2025.
That's more than double the previous Florida record of eight executions set in 1984 and again in 2014.
No Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 came close to matching DeSantis.
Florida accounted for 40% of all executions nationwide in 2025 when 47 people were put to death across the country.
Texas used to lead the nation in executions, carrying out 17 in 2010.
Now Florida stands alone.
The state executed inmates at a rate of one every 16 days from February through December 2025.
"Florida has begun the new year exactly where it left off," the group Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty stated.
Catholic bishops in Florida begged DeSantis to stop signing death warrants throughout 2025.
He ignored every single letter.
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DeSantis Claims Speed Makes the Death Penalty Work
DeSantis keeps saying if you execute people faster, criminals will think twice.
"Capital punishment is an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders," DeSantis said in November 2025.
He thinks ramping up the pace creates a "strong deterrent" to crime.
Here's the problem with that theory.
The National Research Council spent three decades reviewing every major study on death penalty deterrence and released their findings in 2012.
Their conclusion wasn't subtle: the research claiming executions prevent murders is garbage.
Daniel Nagin chaired the expert panel and cut straight to the point — nobody actually knows how potential murderers perceive their punishment risk.
Want to know what the murder statistics actually show?
States without the death penalty have consistently lower murder rates than states that execute people.
From 1973 to 1984, states without capital punishment averaged murder rates at just 63% of what death penalty states recorded.
And Florida leads the entire nation with 30 people sentenced to death who were later proven innocent.
More than half of those wrongly convicted were Black.
DeSantis keeps executing people while Florida has the worst record in America for getting death penalty cases wrong.
Critics say DeSantis ramped up executions as his national political career stalled after his failed 2024 Presidential campaign.
"The only thing we can point to is politics," said Maria DeLiberato of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
https://twitter.com/FLDeathPenalty/status/2014864211931738494?s=20
The 19 men executed in 2025 spent an average of 31 years on death row.
One inmate waited 45 years before DeSantis signed his death warrant.
Victims' families in at least two cases publicly opposed the executions, but DeSantis signed the warrants anyway.
DeSantis now holds the sole power to select who dies and when they die.
Florida is one of only a few states where the governor alone decides executions without court oversight.
That concentration of power in one person's hands is what has death penalty opponents most alarmed.
The Florida Catholic Conference keeps writing letters asking DeSantis to spare lives and commute sentences to life without parole.
"We simply propose that there is a better way to achieve the ends of justice," their letters read.
DeSantis has shown zero interest in slowing down.
With 251 inmates still on death row in Florida, he has plenty more death warrants to sign.
Sources:
- Associated Press, "Florida sets execution date for man convicted of killing a grocery store owner," January 24, 2026.
- Austin Sarat, "Under Ron DeSantis' leadership, Florida leads the nation in executions in 2025," The Conversation, November 17, 2025.
- Rosanna Hughes and Adrian Ma, "Christian leaders speak out as DeSantis repeatedly breaks Florida's execution record," PBS News, August 22, 2025.
- Michelle Spitzer, "Florida's second execution of 2026 scheduled for February," USA TODAY Network, January 23, 2026.
- Death Penalty Information Center, "Deterrence," May 14, 2025.
- National Research Council, "Current Research Not Sufficient to Assess Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty," 2012.
