John S. Koch, a radio reporter in North Florida, has been witnessing state executions since the serial killer Ted Bundy’s in 1989, not missing one in nearly 37 years.
He has never been busier. Florida has executed 19 men this year, shattering the state’s previous record of eight executions, set in 1984 and matched in 2014. The 19th execution of 2025 took place on Thursday evening.
Florida’s recent pace has helped drive up the national tally of executions to a 15-year high, according to a report released this week by the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group.
A total of 47 people have been executed across the country this year. Florida executions accounted for about 40 percent, the report found; no state has executed as many people in a single year since Texas performed 24 executions in 2009.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, has said that he is signing a lot of death warrants lately to bring justice to victims’ families, noting that many condemned inmates have spent decades on death row. “I’m doing my part to deliver that,” he told reporters last month.
For Mr. Koch, the rapid pace has meant watching an execution by lethal injection roughly once every two weeks over the past several months. He does it out of a sense of obligation to his listeners, he said — keeping close tabs on what he sees as perhaps the most consequential action the state takes in their name.
After breakfast on days when executions are scheduled, he drives a little more than an hour southeast from his home in rural McAlpin, Fla., about midway between Jacksonville and Tallahassee, to the Florida State Prison near Starke.
He goes into the prison with no cellphone or pen. Prison staff members supply him with a notepad and two pencils. Only a few people are allowed to witness executions, including the victims’ relatives, if they choose to attend; a spiritual adviser for the death row inmate; a legal witness; and a few reporters. No one from the inmate’s family can be present.
Mr. Koch listens for inmates’ last words and observes closely as the three-drug lethal injection protocol is administered, looking for any signs of lingering consciousness or physical reactions, and whether the process takes unusually long. Afterward, he files his radio reports from under a tree or from his car, a Honda Civic VX with 456,000 miles on it. It is typically a 12-hour day.
He is 76 and still dedicated to what has become his life’s work, which since last year he has done as a freelancer, he said.
Sometimes, on his drive home, he takes a back road or two to clear his head. After an execution last month, he drove an extra 10 miles to sort himself out. “It gets hard,” he allowed.
Mr. Koch covered only one execution last year because Mr. DeSantis signed only one death warrant. The governor approved two executions in 2019, his first year in office; none at all from 2020 to 2022; and six in 2023, when he was running in the Republican presidential primary.
That same year, Mr. DeSantis signed a law that allowed Florida juries to recommend capital punishment without a unanimous vote; only Alabama has a similar policy. He also signed another law allowing the death penalty to be imposed on defendants who were convicted of sexual battery against children.
Some of Mr. DeSantis’s critics, including opponents of the death penalty, questioned whether the 2023 executions were politically motivated, since Mr. DeSantis was running against President Trump. During his first term, Mr. Trump resumed federal executions after a 17-year pause; he did so again after taking office in January, and has pushed for more federal and state executions.
Mr. DeSantis, who is Catholic, has not spoken about the death penalty in personal terms. He has said that he signed only a couple of death warrants his first year because he was still settling into office, and that during the coronavirus pandemic he had other priorities.
Now, lawyers for death row inmates have a hard time keeping up with the number of death warrants being signed. Florida has 251 such inmates. The state is second only to California, which has not held an execution since 2006.
Victims’ families have often said that they feel relief after the execution of their loved one’s killer. Mr. Koch’s coverage of the execution last week of Mark A. Geralds, 58, who was convicted of fatally stabbing Tressa Pettibone during a home invasion in 1989, included a statement from Ms. Pettibone’s family.
“Tomorrow, when we wake up, it will be the first time in nearly 37 years that we don’t have to worry about another appeal being filed or another law changing that could potentially thwart the justice we have been fighting so hard for for so long,” the statement said.
Other victims’ relatives have campaigned against the death penalty. When Curtis Windom, 59, who was convicted of a triple murder in 1992, was put to death in August, one of the people who opposed his execution was Curtisia Windom. She is the daughter of Mr. Windom and one of his victims, Valerie Davis, who was his girlfriend at the time.
“Forgiveness comes with time, and 33 years is a long time,” Ms. Windom said in a statement. “I, myself, have forgiven my father.”
Opponents of the death penalty have found many of Florida’s executions this year to be problematic.
Eight of the men were sentenced to death by split juries, according to Grace Hanna, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an advocacy group. Seven were military veterans. Four men had intellectual disabilities, including Frank A. Walls, who was executed on Thursday. One man had suffered abuse at a state reform school so notorious that Florida now allows survivors to submit claims for financial restitution.
“In many of these cases, the men who have been executed have been safely housed and incarcerated for 30, 40 and almost 50 years,” Ms. Hanna said.
Mr. Koch covered the original trial in 1994 against Anthony Wainwright, who was put to death in June. Digging in his meticulous files, he found reporting from three decades ago for his coverage ahead of the execution. A local newspaper in Lake City, Fla., where Mr. Wainwright was convicted of raping and killing a woman, had asked Mr. Koch to write a story on the case.
Mr. Koch has his own views about the death penalty (he thinks it is an antiquated form of punishment) and the government (he sees it as deeply troubled). They were shaped by his decades of reporting, and by a young adulthood spent first in military training and then as an activist against the Vietnam War.
What most worries him is how few local reporters witness executions, or cover much local news at all anymore. He and a reporter from The Associated Press were the only journalists to attend the last couple of executions in Florida.
“That just puts more responsibility on my shoulders to keep going and keep myself healthy,” he said. “If I don’t do it, who else will?”
Georgia Gee and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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