Florida set to execute inmate who says he killed to get a death sentence
On Tuesday Florida plans to execute a 63-year-old who killed his cellmate in 2008. It would be the state's 17th execution this year.
Symbolic image · Photo: Dept. of Corrections, Please provide photo credit to: Florida Department of Corrections/Doug Smith. / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
Florida plans to execute James Robertson by lethal injection at noon local time on Tuesday. According to court records, the 63-year-old strangled his then cellmate at Charlotte Correctional Institution in December 2008 with a garrote made of knotted socks. According to Attorney General James Uthmeier, Robertson stated that he killed so he would be charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to death; according to the Tampa Free Press, he cited what he saw as better conditions on death row. He rejected an offer of life imprisonment, pleaded guilty and later waived further appeals.
Governor Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant on 1 October, his 19th of the year according to CBS Miami. Robertson would be the 17th person Florida has executed in 2026. In 2025 the state executed 19 people, the most since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Uthmeier said that "according to Robertson's admissions, there was no provocation or fight that led to the murder".
The group Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty had already described the twin executions of 28 July as an "unprecedented escalation" of the state's use of the death penalty. The death warrant for a 74-year-old prisoner who was due to be executed on the same day was withdrawn; his lawyers argue that dementia makes him incompetent to be executed. Another execution in Florida is scheduled for 20 October. In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee has paused executions for the rest of the year following the failed attempt to execute Christa Pike.