Florida set to execute 77-year-old Vietnam veteran, its 18th execution this year
Florida plans to execute William Reaves on Tuesday evening for the 1986 killing of a sheriff's deputy. More than 100 veterans asked for mercy. The Pike case keeps the lethal injection debate alive.
Archive image · Photo: Dept. of Corrections, Please provide photo credit to: Florida Department of Corrections/Doug Smith. / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
Florida is set to execute William Reaves, 77, by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison near Starke. The Army veteran was convicted of fatally shooting an Indian River County sheriff's deputy outside a Vero Beach convenience store in September 1986 after a struggle over a gun. It would be Florida's 18th execution this year under Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Defense attorneys argued that jurors were never told the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs rated Reaves 100% disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder from his Vietnam War service. More than 100 veterans wrote to DeSantis asking him to halt the execution. The Florida Supreme Court rejected his final appeals last week, and an appeal was still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. DeSantis has said his goal is to bring justice to victims' families who have waited decades.
Florida accounts for more than half of the 31 U.S. executions so far this year, according to The Associated Press. The debate over execution methods has been fueled by the case of Christa Pike in Tennessee, who was convicted of the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer and survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital in late September. Unlike Tennessee, Florida uses a three-drug combination.