Florida executed a prisoner on Tuesday who said he deliberately strangled another inmate in order to be sentenced to death. It was the state’s first execution since a botched lethal injection in Tennessee cast increased scrutiny on capital punishment.
The prisoner, James Robertson, 63, was put to death by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, Fla., for the 2008 murder of Frank Hart. Lethal injections in Florida consist of three drugs: a sedative, a drug inducing paralysis and potassium acetate, which stops the heart.
Mr. Robertson — who had been behind bars for more than three decades for burglary, assault and other crimes — told officials that he no longer wanted to be in prison and that he had killed Mr. Hart so he could be put on death row. He pleaded guilty to the murder charge and later ended his appeals.
He was pronounced dead at 12:32 p.m., according to the Florida Department of Corrections. An agency spokesman, Jordan Kirkland, told reporters afterward that the execution happened with no complications.
Mr. Robertson’s execution was Florida’s 17th this year, continuing the swift pace of executions in recent years under Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Last year, Florida executed 19 inmates, the most in one year in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Mr. Robertson’s execution comes almost two weeks after the bungled attempt to execute Christa Pike in Tennessee. Ms. Pike, 50, survived two doses of the drug pentobarbital at her Sept. 30 execution and was rushed to the hospital. She has now returned to prison as officials investigate what went wrong.
Tennessee has since halted all executions, and death penalty opponents have seized on the failed attempt to push for an end to the death penalty.
But executions have pushed forward. Last week, Texas put an inmate to death with the same drug, becoming the first state to do so after the failed procedure in Tennessee.
A day later, on Oct. 8, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon would livestream the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist convicted of fatally shooting 13 people and wounding 32 others in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas. The last public execution in United States happened nearly a century ago. The plan has drawn intense criticism from human-rights advocates and members of both political parties.
Before Mr. Robertson’s execution on Tuesday, the corrections department spokesman said the state had a sound lethal injection protocol. “We are very committed to carrying that out in a humane and dignified manner,” Mr. Kirkland said, according to The Associated Press.
Under Mr. DeSantis, who decides the timing of executions in the state, Florida’s death chamber has become significantly busier.
He has signed death warrants for two more inmates this year. William Reaves, 77, is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 20 for the fatal shooting of a sheriff’s deputy in 1986. On Nov. 5, the state is scheduled to execute Jesse Guardado, 64, for the robbery and murder of a woman in 2004.
Mr. Robertson was supposed to be the first of two executions on Tuesday. But last week, the governor withdrew the death warrant for William Lee Thompson, 74, who lawyers said suffered from dementia and was in ailing health. The governor’s office did not explain why the warrant was withdrawn.
Mr. Robertson was an inmate at Charlotte Correctional Institution in Punta Gorda, Fla., in December 2008 when he tied two socks together and strangled Mr. Hart, 52. Mr. Robertson confessed that he had planned the murder solely to get the death penalty, and insisted that he would keep killing until he was moved to death row, according to court documents.
“I just, you know, want the sentence to be carried out,” Mr. Robertson said at a court hearing on Oct. 1, according to a judge’s order.
After the execution, Rebecca Hart, Mr. Hart’s daughter, told reporters that her father was killed eight days before his scheduled release. She noted that Mr. Robertson’s case appeared on a true-crime documentary.
“For viewers, my father’s death may be an episode they can watch and turn off,” Ms. Hart said. “For my family, there is no remote control. There is no way to turn off the memories of what happened to someone we loved.”
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