Indiana Executes Jeffrey Weisheit as Florida and Alabama Schedule Two More on Same Day
Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, was pronounced dead at 12:45 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, at the Indiana state prison in Michigan City. The Guardian reported that he had no final words. His execution was the first of three lethal injections scheduled across the United States that day, CNN reported.
Weisheit had acknowledged killing his girlfriend's two children in a house fire in the Evansville area in 2010. An Indiana court had ordered that the sentence be carried out before sunrise on Thursday.
Lethal injection is a method of execution that uses drugs administered by injection. Weisheit's legal challenges included an effort to win clemency, a power that lets a governor reduce a sentence. Indiana Governor Mike Braun declined to change his sentence to life in prison. Weisheit's lawyers also did not persuade Braun to allow brain scans that could assess a history of head injuries and mental health problems, according to The Guardian.
Weisheit's final objection concerned the drugs Indiana planned to use. They were bought from a pharmacy that faces a disciplinary hearing next week before the Indiana pharmacy board. Braun issued a statement on the execution on Thursday, and Attorney General Todd Rokita also issued a statement.
Hours later, Florida had scheduled the execution of Jesse Guardado, now 64. He was convicted of fatally stabbing a 75-year-old woman inside her Walton County home in 2004, then taking her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs. A court turned down his appeal before the scheduled execution. If carried out, it would be Florida's 19th execution this year under Governor Ron DeSantis, matching a record the state set in 2025.
In Alabama, Michael Taylor, 54, was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday. In 1991, when he was 19, Taylor beat two people, aged 83 and 79, to death with a metal bar during a robbery in their home in Gadsden. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey declined to reduce his sentence to life in prison.
Taylor had selected nitrogen gas as his execution method several years ago. A judge later declared that method unconstitutional, and another judge ruled against his attorneys' objection to the last-minute switch to lethal injection.
If all three executions proceed as scheduled, Thursday would be the second time in 2026 that three people were put to death in the United States on the same day.
