Ricardo Gonzalez shot Officer Steven Bauer in the chest during a 1992 bank robbery and then immediately picked up the money tray off the ground.
Thirty-four years later, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just signed his death warrant.
And what Ron DeSantis has quietly built in Florida is the reason two of Gonzalez's accomplices are still sitting on death row – watching what's coming for them.
The Crime That Waited Three Decades for Justice
January 3, 1992.
Officer Steven Bauer of the North Miami Beach Police Department was walking bank tellers to the drive-thru windows at Kislak National Bank when Gonzalez and three accomplices ambushed them.
They grabbed the cash box.
Gonzalez fired the shot that pierced Bauer's chest.
https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2117293156765171842?a=pDGAgFGw5qT0ZI-cusA&s=20
Then – and this is the part that landed in the sentencing order – he immediately reached down and picked up the money tray off the ground.
He later claimed he aimed low and thought he only hit the officer in the leg.
Detectives found him at his home a little over two weeks later.
He confessed twice – once unrecorded, once recorded.
At sentencing, a neuropsychologist argued Gonzalez acted under extreme emotional disturbance due to marital stress, a fragmented childhood, language barriers, and boxing-related brain damage.
Circuit Court Judge Robert Scola, Jr. signed the death sentence on September 19, 1998.
His share of the robbery that killed Steven Bauer was $1,500.
“The record reflects that the Kislak National Bank in North Miami, Florida, was robbed by four gunmen on January 3, 1992,” a police report stated at the time. “The perpetrators made their getaway in two stolen grey Chevrolet Caprice cars after taking a cash box from one of the drive-in tellers. During the robbery, police officer Steven Bauer was shot and killed.”
Florida Is Doing What No State Has Done in 50 Years
DeSantis leaves office in January.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2117272721922879835?a=YFuZDeJq6_orxu84Q1c&s=20
He is spending his final months doing something no Florida governor has done since the death penalty was restored in 1976 – clearing the backlog.
Florida set the modern record last year with 19 executions – more in a single year than any governor in the state's modern death-penalty era.
The previous record was eight, set in 2014.
In July, Florida became the first state in nearly a decade to execute two men in a single day.
With two executions already scheduled before Gonzalez – November 5 and November 19 – Florida is on pace to hit 21 by December 1.
The next closest state this year is Texas, at seven.
DeSantis explained it plainly: "Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly."
He has called the death penalty "an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders" and says swifter execution of sentences would serve as a stronger deterrent to crime.
Steven Bauer's family has waited 34 years for this.
Two of Gonzalez's codefendants – Leonardo Franqui and Pablo San Martin – remain among the 235 inmates on Florida's death row with no warrant dates set for either.
Here's what the left refuses to say out loud: DeSantis just proved that a governor who actually means it can clear decades of backlogged justice in two years.
https://twitter.com/BuddyRevel17394/status/2117272979981640083?a=2wte9QpzSiLN0cDEOGY&s=20
While Democrats spent four years pushing to abolish the death penalty entirely, one Republican governor turned Florida's death chamber into the nation's most active – and the families who waited thirty years for a phone call are finally getting it.
DeSantis is gone in January.
The question now is whether the next governor looks at 235 names on that death row list and sees a backlog – or lets it collect dust the way every administration before DeSantis did.
Sources:
- WTVT Web Staff and Jim Turner, "Florida approaches record execution pace as DeSantis signs new death warrant for 1992 police officer murder," Fox 13, November 2, 2026.
- News Service of Florida, "DeSantis signs death warrant for Ricardo Gonzalez in 1992 North Miami Beach police officer killing," NBC2 News, November 2, 2026.
- Associated Press, "Busiest US death chamber: Florida executes 2 men in a day, including an octogenarian," Las Vegas Sun, July 30, 2026.
- Associated Press, "Florida sets up a third execution in 2026 as state leads US death penalty surge," ABC News, January 30, 2026.
- WLRN, "Gov. Ron DeSantis says executions are about justice amid modern-era record," November 4, 2025.
