Florida carries out another execution

The 5th Execution of 2026

Billy Leon Kearse convicted of fatally shooting a police officer with his own service weapon during a traffic stop was executed on March 3, 2026 in Florida, becoming the third person put to death by the state this year after a record 19 executions in 2025, according to The Associated Press.

Kearse, 53, was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was condemned for the 1991 shooting death of Fort Pierce Police Officer Danny Parrish.

The execution started just after 6 p.m. When a warden asked Kearse if he had any final words, he said all he could do was ask for forgiveness from Parrish’s family.

“To his family, I sincerely apologize for what I’ve done,” Kearse said. “There is no way I can ever repay that.”

More than a dozen family members and police officers gathered to observe the execution.

Kearse twitched briefly after the lethal drugs began entering his system but stopped moving several minutes later. It was another quarter of an hour before a medic entered the room and pronounced Kearse dead.

After the execution, Parrish’s widow, Mirtha Busbin, said she has found peace.

“It’s been a long, long 35 years,” said Busbin. “We didn’t win anything though; we lost another life, but we did get justice.”

Busbin, who works as a victim advocate for the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, said she didn’t expect Kearse to apologize, but she did appreciate it.

“I can forgive him, I can move on,” Busbin said. “It was the right thing to do.”

Court records show Parrish had pulled over Kearse for driving the wrong way on a one-way street in January of that year. After Kearse couldn’t produce a valid driver’s license, Parrish ordered Kearse out of his vehicle and attempted to handcuff him when a struggle ensued.

Kearse grabbed Parrish’s firearm during the struggle and fired 14 times, striking the officer nine times in the body and four times in his body armor, prosecutors said. A taxi driver heard the shots and called for help on the officer’s radio, but Parrish died after being rushed to a hospital. Police used license plate information called in by Parrish during the traffic stop to arrest Kearse at his home.

Kearse was initially convicted of first-degree murder and robbery with a firearm and sentenced to death in 1991. The Florida Supreme Court later found the trial court failed to give jurors certain information about aggravating circumstances and ordered a new sentencing. Kearse again drew the death penalty in 1997.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, far outpacing Alabama, South Carolina and Texas which each held five executions last year. The 19 Florida executions that year outstripped the previous high totals of eight in both 1984 and 2014.

Besides the three Florida executions to date this year, Texas and Oklahoma have each executed one person each so far in 2026.

Two more Florida executions are scheduled soon, starting with Michael Lee King on March 17 for the 2008 kidnap and killing of a mother of two. Former police officer James Duckett is set to be executed March 31 for the 1987 killing of an 11-year-old girl.

All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

Hours before Tuesday’s execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Kearse’s final appeal without comment. And last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied appeals filed by Kearse.

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Florida carries out record breaking 14th execution of the year

 The 36th Execution of 2025

Samuel Lee Smithers, convicted of the 1996 killings of two women whose bodies were left in a rural pond was put to death on October 14, 2025 in a record 14th execution in Florida this year.

Smithers, 72, was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. following a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Smithers was convicted in 1999 of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

The curtain to the death chamber went up promptly at the scheduled 6:00 p.m. execution time, with Smithers already strapped to a table and an IV in his arm. When asked if he had a final statement, he responded, “No sir.”

The administration of the lethal drugs began almost immediately. Initially, Smithers’ breathing was heavy and he underwent slight convulsions before all movements eventually stopped. A warden shook Smithers and shouted his name, but there was no response.

As more time passed, the man’s complexion began to turn gray. A medic entered the chamber at 6:14 p.m. to check his vital signs and Smithers was declared dead a minute later. Afterward, Department of Corrections spokesman Ted Veerman said the execution was carried out without incident.

The lethal injection extended Florida’s record for total executions in a single year, with the state planning to carry out two more executions later this month and next under death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, followed by Texas with five.

Smithers was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1999.

His was one of two executions Tuesday evening in the U.S. Lance Shockley, 48, was executed in Missouri for the fatal shooting of a state trooper more than 20 years ago.

Court records indicate Smithers met Christy Cowan and Denise Roach on different dates in May 1996 at a Tampa motel to pay them for sex. At the time, he was doing landscape maintenance on a 27-acre (11-hectare) property that included three ponds in rural Plant City, Florida.

On May 28, 1996, the property owner — who had met Smithers in church where he was a Baptist deacon — stopped by to find Smithers cleaning an ax in the carport, which he claimed to be using to trim tree limbs. The property owner noticed a pool of blood in the carport, and Smithers told her that someone must have come by and killed a small animal, according to court records.

The woman contacted law enforcement, and a sheriff’s deputy met her later that day at the property. The blood had been cleaned up, but the deputy noticed drag marks leading to one of the ponds, according to court records. That’s where authorities found the bodies of Cowan and Roach. Both women had been severely beaten, strangled and left in the pond to die.

The Florida Supreme Court denied an appeal from Smithers last week. His attorneys had argued that his age should make him ineligible for execution under the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Although Smithers would be one of the oldest people ever executed in Florida, the justices ruled that the elderly are not categorically exempt from the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final appeal without comment Tuesday evening.

With Tuesday’s executions, a total of 37 men had died by court-ordered execution to date this year in the U.S.

Norman Mearle Grim Jr., 65, is scheduled for Florida’s 15th execution on Oct. 28. He was convicted of raping and killing his neighbor, whose body was found by a fisherman near the Pensacola Bay Bridge in 1998.

Bryan Fredrick Jennings, 66, is set for Florida’s 16th execution on Nov. 13. He was convicted of raping and killing a 6-year-old girl after abducting her from her central Florida home in 1979.

Florida executions are carried out with a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, the state Department of Corrections said.

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Texas man executed for 2001 rape and murder of 18-year-old woman

 The 8th Execution of 2024

Texas executed Ramiro Gonzales by lethal injection on June 26, 2024 for a 2001 murder, the state Department of Criminal Justice said, following unsuccessful appeals to the US Supreme Court that argued, in part, he should have been ineligible for the death penalty under state law because he was no longer dangerous, reported CNN.

Gonzales, 41, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2006 for the sexual assault and killing of 18-year-old Bridget Townsend, court records show. His execution was the first of two – the other in Oklahoma – carried out this week in the United States.

Gonzales was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m., the state criminal justice department said.

The department provided Gonzales’ last statement before he was executed, in which he repeatedly apologized to the Townsend family and said he “never stopped praying” for their forgiveness: “I can’t put into words the pain I have caused y’all, the hurt what I took away that I cannot give back.”

“I hope this apology is enough. I lived the rest of this life for you guys to the best of my ability for restitution, restoration, taking responsibility,” Gonzales said. “I never stopped praying that you would forgive me and that one day I would have this opportunity to apologize.”

During the penalty phase of Gonzales’ trial, jurors were required to find, as they are in all capital cases in Texas, a “probability” Gonzales would continue to “commit criminal acts of violence.” Without this determination, capital defendants in the Lone Star State are not eligible for the death penalty, per state law.

In their appeals to the Supreme Court, Gonzales’ attorneys said his track record these last 18 years shows he was not dangerous, pointing to his commitment to his Christian faith, ministry to others behind bars and his unsuccessful attempts to donate a kidney to a stranger in need.

Additionally, they said the evidence relied upon to make the finding of future dangerousness was false: An expert witness who diagnosed the inmate with antisocial personality disorder relied on recidivism data later found to be incorrect, and he later evaluated Gonzales and walked back his testimony.

In a pair of brief orders Wednesday, the US Supreme Court gave no comment in its denial of Gonzales’ requests. There were no noted dissents.

“We have finally witnessed justice being served,” Townsend’s brother, David, said Wednesday after witnessing Gonzales’ execution, according to the Associated Press. “This day marks the end of a long and painful journey for our family. For over two decades we have endured unimaginable pain and heartache.”

Gonzales’ death “provides us a little bit of peace,” he said. “I do want to say we are not joyous. We are not happy. This is a very, very sad day for everyone all the way around.”

Gonzales had grieved for Townsend and her family, as well as another woman he kidnapped and raped before confessing to Townsend’s killing, his attorneys said Wednesday night in a statement.

“Ramiro knew he took something from this world he could never give back. He lived with that shame every day, and it shaped the person he worked so hard to become,” said the attorneys, Thea Posel and Raoul Schonemann. “If this country’s legal system was intended to encourage rehabilitation, he would be an exemplar.”

In his final statement before execution, Gonzales also thanked his family and friends, along with two officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for “the opportunity to become responsible, to learn accountability and to make good.”

The state of Texas had also opposed Gonzales’ appeals, arguing in part his team had misconstrued the eligibility requirement and contending the question of whether Gonzales would continue to be a threat was not limited to the inmate’s behavior on death row.

Even taking into account his behavior post-conviction, “there’s undoubtedly sufficient evidence to uphold the finding of future dangerousness,” attorneys for the state wrote, pointing to the subsequent kidnapping and rape of another woman and a litany of transgressions he committed while in jail.

“Even if a jury could somehow consider events that had not happened yet, i.e., Gonzales’s behavior on death row, the jury could still have rationally believed Gonzales would be a danger in the future,” they said.

On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to recommend clemency in a 7-0 vote. Without that recommendation, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott only could have given Gonzales a one-time 30-day reprieve.

In a statement, the Medina County Criminal District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, said the death penalty is never “taken lightly” in Texas.

“Nothing about an execution is easy. Nothing about losing a loved one to murder is easy,” District Attorney Mark Haby said. “However, it seems to be a fitting end that the defendant was executed on the birthday of the person he killed, Bridget Townsend. May both their souls find peace.”

CNN has reached out to members of Townsend’s family for comment.When Townsend told Gonzales her boyfriend wasn’t home, he went to the house in search of drugs. He stole money, then kidnapped Townsend, tying her hands and feet before driving her to a location near his family’s ranch, the opinion states. There, he raped and fatally shot her, it says.

The case went unsolved for 18 months. Then, while sitting in jail after pleading guilty to the rape of another woman, Gonzales confessed to Townsend’s killing and led authorities to her body.

Gonzales’ execution was the nation’s eighth this year, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit organization that tracks capital punishment in the US and has in the past been critical of the way it’s administered.

It was followed by the ninth Thursday in Oklahoma, which executed Richard Rojem for the 1984 kidnapping, rape and murder of his 7-year-old stepdaughter, Layla Cummings. Rojem was pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m., the director of the state Department of Corrections confirmed in a statement. The state’s parole board voted last week against recommending clemency for Rojem, who had claimed he was innocent, according to CNN affiliate KOCO.

Rojem, like Gonzales, was the second person executed in his respective state so far in 2024, according to the center’s data. By this time last year, 13 inmates had been put to death in the US, the data shows.

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