Florida Executes William Reaves for 1986 Deputy Killing
Florida executed William Reaves, 77, on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, for the 1986 shooting death of Indian River County deputy Richard Raczkowski. Reaves was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. It was the state's 18th execution of the year.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, every Florida execution uses a three-drug lethal injection. The drugs are a sedative, a paralytic that stops the body from moving, and a drug that stops the heart.
Reaves was the eighth Florida prisoner over the age of 70 to be executed in 2026.
The killing took place in September 1986. According to court records, Raczkowski responded to a 911 call made from a payphone outside a convenience store in Vero Beach. Reaves later acknowledged that he placed the call. During a struggle over a gun that had fallen out of Reaves' shorts, Reaves regained control of the weapon and shot the fleeing deputy four times. The deputy later died of his wounds. Reaves was convicted of first-degree murder.
His case has been through several rounds of court review. He was first convicted and sentenced to death about a year after the shooting. The Florida Supreme Court later overturned that death sentence because of a conflict of interest involving the prosecutor, and ordered a new trial. Reaves was sentenced to death again in 1992.
Before the execution, the Florida Supreme Court rejected his appeals the previous week. On the afternoon of the execution day, the US Supreme Court rejected his final appeal without comment.
Defense attorneys have raised a separate point about his military service. Reaves was an Army veteran of the Vietnam War. The US Department of Veterans Affairs rated him 100% disabled due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by his service, according to those attorneys, who said the jurors who recommended his death sentence were never told of that rating. On Monday, October 19, more than 100 veterans sent Ron DeSantis a letter urging him to stop the execution.
DeSantis signed Reaves' death warrant, the order that authorizes an execution. He leaves the governorship in January 2027 after two terms.
Florida set a state record with 19 executions in 2025. Nationally, 47 people were executed that year. So far in 2026, 32 US executions have been carried out, and Florida has carried out more than half of them. In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state in nearly a decade to do so.
The next execution on Florida's schedule is that of Jesse Guardado, 64, set for November 5, 2026. He was sentenced for a 2004 robbery and killing of a woman, carried out to buy drugs. If that execution is carried out, Florida would tie its 2025 record of 19.
