Florida executes 77-year-old man as state nears its 2025 record
William Reaves died by lethal injection on Tuesday evening. He had been convicted of the 1986 murder of a sheriff's deputy. It was the 32nd execution in the US 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 executed William Reaves, 77, on Tuesday. Officials said he was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. local time at Florida State Prison near Starke after a three-drug injection. Reaves had been convicted of murdering an Indian River County sheriff's deputy who was shot in September 1986. Asked whether he had any last words, Reaves replied, according to AP: "No, I do not." The US Supreme Court denied a stay on the same day without comment.
His lawyers had argued, among other things, that jurors were never told the Department of Veterans Affairs had rated the Vietnam veteran 100 percent disabled because of post-traumatic stress disorder. More than 100 veterans had asked Governor Ron DeSantis to halt the execution. Sheriff Eric Flowers described it as closure rather than justice. The slain deputy's brother said his brother had finally received justice.
It was Florida's 18th execution this year and the 32nd in the US. If Jesse Guardado is executed as scheduled on 5 November, Florida will tie its record of 19 executions set in 2025. The debate over execution methods continues: unlike Florida, states such as Tennessee use a single drug. There, according to AP, Christa Pike survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital in September and was taken to hospital.