Florida Executes James Robertson, Its 17th Prisoner This Year
James Robertson, 63, was pronounced dead at 12:32 p.m. on Tuesday, 13 October 2026, after a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford. Florida corrections spokesperson Jordan Kirkland said the execution took place without incident. Robertson was the 17th prisoner executed by Florida in 2026. The Guardian
He had been scheduled to die at noon on Tuesday at the Raiford facility in Bradford County. Florida Phoenix Robertson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the 2008 killing of his cellmate, Frank Hart, at Charlotte Correctional Institution near Fort Myers. He killed Hart in hopes of getting a death sentence. Bay News 9
The execution proceeded after a Charlotte County circuit court accepted Robertson's 5 October request to withdraw all appeals. That made him what lawyers call a volunteer, a prisoner who chooses to stop fighting his death sentence, and he had no pending appeal at the time of death. Most capital cases take a different path, with years of review in state and federal courts before execution.
Florida uses lethal injection for all executions: a sedative to cause unconsciousness, a paralytic to stop breathing and movement, and a drug that stops the heart, according to the corrections department website. Officials gave no further detail about the drug sequence in Robertson's case beyond confirming the three-drug method.
Robertson was to have been followed within hours by a second execution. On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew the death warrant, the formal order setting an execution, for William Lee Thompson, 74. Thompson was convicted of kidnapping and murdering a 23-year-old woman in 1976. The order cited a medical evaluation and his lawyer's assessment that Thompson may be insane.
Thompson's attorneys say he has dementia and believed George W. Bush was still president. The controlling question is now competency, or whether a prisoner mentally understands why he is being punished. Under longstanding constitutional doctrine, a prisoner found incompetent to be executed cannot be put to death. Thompson now faces medical and legal evaluation rather than an imminent execution date.
Two further executions remain on Florida's calendar. William Reaves, 77, is scheduled for 20 October for the 1986 murder of a sheriff's deputy in Indian River County. Jesse Guardado, 64, is set for 5 November for murdering a 74-year-old woman in Walton County in 2004. If both proceed, Florida will tie its 2025 modern-day record of 19 executions in a calendar year.
The Florida execution came less than two weeks after a failed attempt in Tennessee. Authorities there tried to execute Christa Pike on 30 September with two doses of pentobarbital but abandoned the attempt. Pike was discharged from hospital on Saturday and returned to prison 10 days later. Her lawyers have asked for her sentence for the 1995 murder of a 19-year-old classmate to be commuted, or reduced, to life without parole.
The broader context here is a split between fast-moving schedules and the medical and technical issues that can slow them. Florida is on pace to match last year's 19 executions, with Robertson's volunteer waiver and a three-drug protocol that drew no official report of difficulty. At the same time, the Thompson withdrawal and the Pike case point to the two issues most likely to affect what comes next: competency claims involving elderly prisoners with dementia, and the reliability of lethal-injection drugs. Whether Reaves and Guardado clear final review, how Florida judges Thompson's competency, and how Tennessee answers Pike's commutation request will show whether 2026 is an outlier or a new norm.
