Florida was underdosing 'expired' drugs during prolific run of executions

In a small, piercingly bright room inside a state prison in northeast Florida, Frank Walls was strapped to a gurney and injected three times: first with a sedative meant to render him unconscious, then a paralytic to prevent any visible movement, and finally potassium acetate to induce cardiac arrest, reported Mother Jones.

Walls’ execution on December 18, 2025, capped Florida’s deadliest year in modern history. With 19 executions last year, Florida more than doubled its own record, and put more people to death than Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina combined. This execution spree came even as Florida’s lethal injection protocol has come under scrutiny, prompting fears that those executed are at risk of complications and needless suffering. 

In his final appeal, Walls asked Florida to review its three-step protocol, arguing that the way the state’s been carrying out executions would violate his Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. His attorneys documented allegations that even though men in the death chamber couldn’t physically show the effects due to Florida’s three-drug protocol, some may have suffered and died with the feeling of drowning. And an analysis of court records, prison logs, redacted autopsy reports, and eyewitness testimonies by Mother Jones found documented issues in half the executions last year before Walls.

In at least nine executions from February to September 2025, there were signs of underdosings, the use of expired drugs, drug substitutions, or flaws in drug logs maintained by the Florida Department of Corrections. 

“Mr. Walls will die a needlessly cruel death if Florida insists on trying to kill him with Florida’s version of lethal injection,” wrote anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot, who met Walls at the Florida state prison five months before his execution, in an affidavit Walls’ defense team submitted to the District Court in Tallahassee. 

Autopsy results for Walls, who was sentenced to death for the 1987 killings of an Air Force airman and his girlfriend, have not yet been released. But Zivot feared the three-drug protocol could cause pulmonary edema, a condition that’s been found in previous autopsies of people executed by Florida, and which Zivot said causes “the terror that accompanies drowning and asphyxiation as they choke on their own blood.” 

The Florida Attorney General’s office didn’t dispute Walls’ assertion that he could experience the sensation of drowning and gasping for air after the second drug is injected. They called it “irrelevant.” 

The state has been similarly unmoved by problems in recent executions. 

In June 2025, logs included in a lawsuit showed that one man was executed with half of the required amount of paralytic, and another man didn’t receive a full dose of the drug meant to swiftly induce cardiac arrest. 

The Florida Department of Corrections’ own records indicated that the execution team used expired sedatives in four deaths, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the drugs and the risk of complications, including severe pain. They also recorded the use of a local anaesthetic that’s not part of the state’s execution protocol, and listed dates for use of the drugs that don’t match execution dates. 

Each of these issues would violate Florida’s own protocol. Rather than order an investigation, the state’s governor and past presidential candidate, Republican Ron DeSantis, has already scheduled four executions this year.

The death penalty has waxed and waned in public opinion over the years, with botched executions, racial disparities, and wrongful convictions under scrutiny in recent years. Florida alone has seen at least 30 exonerations from its death row. 

But reviving the federal death penalty is a key tenet of President Donald Trump’s tough-on-crime agenda—and DeSantis has positioned Florida at the vanguard of the Trump-led Republican Party. His own political future is unclear after his failed presidential run, but he’s echoing loud and clear the president’s enthusiasm for harsh and swift executions. Florida is leading the death penalty’s resurgence.

“The exact reasons as to why DeSantis has chosen to ramp things up now—I don’t think we know,” said Hannah Gorman, who teaches death penalty law at Florida International University’s College of Law.

But she said the pace of Florida’s executions have ramifications nationally and internationally. In 2025, executions in the United States nearly doubled, and 40 percent of them were in Florida alone. 

“Florida is an outlier in the U.S.,” said Gorman. “But this is also a massive message coming out of America.” 

DeSantis has issued death warrants for 32 people since he took office in 2019, and 250 people remain on Florida’s death row. 

DeSantis’ office didn’t respond to a list of questions by Mother Jones. But in November 2025, DeSantis said he was doing his “part to deliver justice” to victims’ families by executing those who have been on death row for decades. And the governor has unusually broad power to enact this penalty: he both sets execution dates and proceeds over the clemency hearings that could halt his own execution orders.

The last review of lethal injection protocol by Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon was in February 2025, after the year’s executions had already begun. Dixon wrote in a letter to Gov. DeSantis that his department’s lethal injection procedure was in line with decency standards and “dignity of man.”  

“The foremost objective of the lethal injection process is a humane and dignified death,” Dixon wrote. “The process will not involve unnecessary lingering or the unnecessary or wanton infliction of pain and suffering.”

The one-page letter didn’t explain what Dixon’s review entailed, and the Florida Department of Corrections didn’t respond to questions about the review. 

A month after this letter was sent to Tallahassee, in March 2025, Florida executed Edward James. Prison drug logs disclosed in court records show James was given a local anesthetic—lidocaine—that’s not mentioned in the 14-page protocol signed off by Dixon. 

It’s unclear why that drug was administered or who authorized it. 

To Ron McAndrew, a former Florida State Prison warden who led Florida’s executions from 1996 to 1998 and oversaw three electric chair executions, Florida ought to slow down and examine its protocol before executing anyone else. 

“To put a warden and a death team through 19 executions in one year was a horrible thing for the Governor to do.”

Now an anti-death penalty advocate, McAndrew’s concerns extend beyond procedure. He worries about the toll on staff. The ones doing the “dirty work.” 

McAndrew has overseen and witnessed executions gone wrong. He was in charge in 1997, when Pedro Medina’s head burst into flames on the electric chair. The former warden said he wouldn’t wish that on anyone, especially prison staff. 

“To put a warden and a death team through 19 executions in one year was a horrible thing for the Governor to do,” McAndrew said. “These are the people that are going to wake up screaming in the middle of the night. These are the people that are going to suffer for the rest of their lives because the people they have killed are going to come visiting with them on a regular basis. They’re going to sit on the edge of their bed at night and talk to them.” 

In the past, botched executions or deviations from established execution procedures have prompted death penalty states to pause. Under Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida prison officials botched a lethal injection in 2006, and Bush temporarily halted executions. In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Mary Fallin had to delay executions twice, after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014 and again after the revelation that the state substituted a new drug to stop Charles Warner’s heart in 2015. Warner’s final words, the Associated Press reported, were: “My body is on fire.” A grand jury investigation found “negligence” and serious errors in the state’s executions. 

In 2022 in Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee paused all executions and sought an independent review of its execution protocol over concerns about independent testing of the lethal drugs. When the review ended in 2024, citing fewer opportunities for mistakes, Tennessee moved from a three-drug protocol to a single drug, as at least 1o other states and the federal system have now done.  

Florida has been using the same three-drug combination since 2017. Florida’s governor, however, has yet to announce any investigation into this method or its recent executions, let alone slow his pace in signing death warrants, despite repeated pleas and public accounts. 

In 2025 alone, media coverage described troubling scenes in at least three executions in Florida. In April, Michael Tanzi’s chest heaved for about three minutes, the Associated Press reported. Tanzi was given the unauthorized sedative, lidocaine, prison logs later showed. 

During the execution of Thomas Gudinas in June, media reported that his eyes rolled back and his chest spasmed. Drug logs filed in court records showed that Gudinas was injected with half the amount of paralytic required by Florida’s protocol. Then in November, NBC News reported that former Marine Bryan Jennings’ chest heaved and his arms twitched. Jennings’ autopsy report found that he experienced pulmonary edema—which mirrors the feeling of drowning, and the condition a medical expert feared would happen to Walls at his December execution. 

After Walls’ execution, a spokesperson for the governor’s office said there were no complications with his three-step lethal injection. There were close to 30 witnesses in attendance, including relatives of Walls’ victims. The Pensacola News Journal reported “about six minutes of labored breathing.” 

And Maria DeLiberato, Walls’ former attorney and the legal and policy director for Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said she saw Walls gasping and his chest heaving: “Like he’s choking.” What she witnessed, she said, didn’t match the state’s media briefing from the Raiford prison. 

“I thought something was wrong,” DeLiberato said.

In January, Gov. DeSantis signed his first death warrant of this year for Ronald Heath, who was convicted for the 1989 armed robbery and murder of a traveling salesman near University of Florida. A jury sentenced him to death in a 10–2 vote.

Unanimous jury decisions were not required when Heath was convicted. They became law in Florida after a landmark 2016 Supreme Court judgment, but in 2023, Gov. DeSantis signed a bill into law requiring only 8 of 12 jurors to vote for death. 

Heath’s final appeal urged the US Supreme Court to look into Florida’s three-step lethal injection method, citing previous use of expired drugs, inconsistent dosing and inaccurate logs about what happened in the death chamber. The state argued that the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, “not inaccurate bookkeeping.”

The Supreme Court denied Heath’s request, and Heath’s execution was quick and without outward signs of complications, according to news coverage and a witness. Two weeks later, as Melvin Trotter’s execution date loomed for the murder of a grocery store owner in 1986, he asked for a stay of execution based on the risk of a mangled execution. Though the Supreme Court also rejected Trotter’s petition, this time, Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed her concern about Florida’s “troubling” execution records. 

Sotomayor agreed with denying Trotter’s petition, but acknowledged that prisoners like him are caught in a catch-22: Because they don’t have enough evidence of cruel and unusual punishment, they have been denied the records they’d actually need to prove it. “The very reason” they are seeking these documents, she noted in a four-page statement, is to prove their claims. 

“By continuing to shroud its executions in secrecy, Florida undermines both the integrity of its own execution process and, potentially, this Court’s ability to ensure the State’s compliance with its constitutional obligations,” Sotomayor wrote. 

As Trotter was executed on February 24, he breathed heavily and his body twitched, PBS News reported. Details about the drugs used in Trotter’s execution won’t be revealed until the autopsy reports are made public. 

DeSantis has already ordered two more executions, Billy Kearse on March 3 and Michael King on March 17. And Sotomayor’s words are already reverberating on the busy death row. Within a day of Sotomayor’s statement, her critique of Florida’s secrecy had already been cited in a new appeal—and state officials had already dismissed the justice’s concerns as “speculation.”

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President Trump scheduled to testify before House Oversight Committee?

Bill Clinton became the first former president compelled to testify to members of Congress today. At a closed-door session in Chappaqua, New York, the House Oversight Committee heard from Clinton about his connections to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr. Clinton said he did nothing wrong, adding -- quote -- "I saw nothing that ever gave me pause."

Republican Chairman James Comer spoke late this afternoon.

How about President Trump?

The top Democrat on the congressional committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein has accused the US justice department of withholding files containing allegations of sexual abuse of a minor made against President Donald Trump.

Robert Garcia, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, said he had personally viewed documents containing the allegation that had not been made public.

In response, the justice department said "NOTHING has been deleted", adding that documents were withheld only if they were "duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation".

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein case and has recently said he has been "totally exonerated".

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Arizona legislator seeks to use firing squad for executions

Republican legislators in Arizona want to bring back death by firing squad as an option for those sentenced to the death penalty, and as a requirement for people convicted of killing a law enforcement officer, reported the Arizona Mirror. 

A similar proposal, sponsored by Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin, failed in the Arizona House of Representatives last year, but Sen. Kevin Payne, R-Peoria, revived the idea this year. 

Payne’s Senate Concurrent Resolution 1049 would ask voters in November to amend the Arizona Constitution to allow death row inmates to choose to be executed by lethal injection, the gas chamber or firing squad. If the person was sentenced to death for murdering a law enforcement officer, the firing squad would be the only execution option. 

Senate Bill 1751, also sponsored by Payne, would put the same rules about firing squad executions into state statute, but would only be triggered if voters favor SCR1049. 

Firing squads would be made up of at least three volunteer shooters, and one of those shooters would be given a blank round. 

Last year, Kolodin said his firing squad proposal was inspired by an independent review of Arizona’s death penalty, commissioned by Gov. Katie Hobbs.

Hobbs spiked the draft report from that review, written by retired federal Magistrate Judge David Duncan, which detailed the numerous problems the state has encountered when trying to procure the drug used for lethal injections. Many pharmacies refuse to provide drugs for lethal injections, to avoid harassment and controversy. 

Multiple judges and advocates, including Duncan, have spoken about the use of firing squads and recommended them as a way to continue executions in a more humane manner. Duncan concluded that, although lethal injection appears to be painless and humane, the reality is that it is “fundamentally unreliable, unworkable and unacceptably prone to errors.” 

Kolodin also cited retired federal judge Alex Kozinski, who in 2014 wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the firing squad should be reinstated because it was “foolproof,” unlike lethal injection.

That isn’t true, however. In 2025, South Carolina executed Mikal Mahdi by firing squad. An autopsy revealed only two of the three shooters — all were firing live rounds — hit Mahdi, and none hit him in the heart, as is supposed to happen. Instead, he was shot in the liver and other internal organs. Pathologists said that allowed his heart to remain beating and for him to remain conscious, and in pain, as he bled to death. 

“Mr. Mahdi did experience excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60 seconds after he was shot,” one pathologist wrote in a report filed with the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Arizona has its own history of botched executions by lethal injection, including one in 2014 that was so bad the state didn’t conduct executions for eight years after that. 

Other states have also looked at bringing back the firing squad as a method of execution, and Idaho last year made it the state’s default form of execution. Recently, an inmate in Georgia lost a petition to have his death penalty sentence be imposed by a firing squad as opposed to lethal injection. President Donald Trump has also signaled his support of the method. 

Only one person formally registered in support of HCR1049, while 330 registered in opposition. 

Dale Baich, a former federal public defender in Arizona who has litigated death penalty cases in Ohio and Arizona, urged the legislators to vote against the resolution. 

Baich, who has taught a course on the death penalty in the Arizona State University law program for 22 years, said that the proposals present “constitutional, operational and public policy concerns.”

Although Baich said he recognizes the seriousness of death penalty cases and the profound loss of the victims’ families, Payne’s proposals would not solve the state’s death penalty problems. 

“Instead, it will likely increase litigation, costs and national scrutiny,” he said. “Recent evidence shows firing squad executions are not immune from serious failures or prolonged suffering.”

Baich pointed to Madhi’s botched execution in South Carolina. The South Carolina Supreme Court in 2024 upheld the state’s law allowing execution by firing squad, passed in 2021, saying that it wouldn’t count as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment “unless there is a massive botch of the execution in which each member of the firing squad simply misses the inmate’s heart.”

Courtney Quinones-Machado, who said she was a disabled military combat veteran, a former corrections officer and now a chaplain for those on death row, said she “deeply opposed” Payne’s proposals. Quinones-Machado also spoke against Kolodin’s proposal last year. 

She asked the committee members to think about what participating in an execution would do to the correctional officers. 

“I, too, thought, when I went into the military, I could handle it,” Quinones-Machado said. “I came home a different person.” 

She said that her whole family suffered because of her post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism. 

“I understand you will say this is a voluntary position,” Quinones-Machado said. “I understand that most people think they can handle killing somebody. But I promise you, once you have, it is a different outlook.” 

Both of Payne’s proposals passed the committee along party lines and will next head to the full Senate for consideration. 

Sen. T.J. Shope, R- Coolidge, who voted for both measures, described himself as a “very strong supporter of the death penalty being an option, especially in some of the most heinous crimes that take place in this state.” 

Shope said he hoped that Arizona could look toward Utah for guidance on how to handle any legal issues concerning firing squad executions since that state has carried them out “successfully for decades.” 

Only Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Mississippi allow execution by firing squad. 

Utah has only executed three people that way since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Those executions happened in 1977, 1996 and 2010.

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Florida carries out its second execution of 2026

 The 4th Execution of 2026

Melvin Trotter, convicted of killing a 70-year-old grocery store owner, was put to death on February 24, 2026 in Florida, becoming the second person executed by the state this year after a record 19 executions in 2025, reported The Guardian.

Melvin Trotter, 65, was pronounced dead at 6.15pm following a lethal injection at Florida state prison near Starke for the 1986 stabbing death of Virgie Langford, according to authorities. Alex Lanfranconi, a spokesperson for Republican governor Ron DeSantis, said there were no complications.

Trotter was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1987. After the state supreme court found the trial court erred in handling aggravating factors in his case, he again drew the death penalty at a resentencing in 1993.

The execution and another earlier this month in Florida follow the unprecedented 19 executions by the state last year. In 2025, DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty’s reinstatement in 1976. The previous Florida record was eight executions in 2014.

According to court records, Trotter stabbed and strangled Langford on 16 June 1986, at her store in Palmetto near the southern edge of Tampa Bay. Afterward, a truck driver found Langford bleeding but alive on the back floor of the store, and she provided key details about her attacker before dying at a hospital.

Besides recalling Trotter’s physical appearance, Langford said he had a Tropicana employee badge with the name “Melvin” on it. According to court records, police later found a T-shirt with Langford’s blood type at Trotter’s home and the man’s handprint on a meat cooler at the store.

The Florida supreme court recently denied appeals in which Trotter’s attorneys argued officials had mismanaged his death penalty protocols. They also argued Trotter’s advanced age of 65 should exempt him from execution.

The US supreme court denied Trotter’s final appeal on Tuesday.

Separately, Justice Sonia Sotomayor raised questions about the state’s administration of lethal drugs. Trotter’s attorneys argued that Florida could “maladminister” the state’s protocol in a way that heightens the risk for a “mangled” execution in violation of the eighth amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Sotomayor wrote that, going forward, she hopes the state “will recognize the paramount importance of ensuring that it conducts executions consistently” with the proper protocols.

A total of 47 people were executed in the US in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with five executions each last year.

Besides the two Florida executions this year, Texas and Oklahoma have conducted one execution each so far in 2026.

On 10 February, a man convicted of killing a traveling salesperson became the first person executed in Florida this year. Ronald Palmer Heath, 64, received a lethal injection for the 1989 killing of Michael Sheridan.

Two more Florida executions are scheduled next month, starting with Billy Leon Kearse on 3 March and Michael Lee King on 17 March.

All Florida executions are carried out by injecting a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the department of corrections.

Hours before Tuesday’s execution, Florida corrections officials said, Trotter awoke at 3.20am and had one visitor during the day. He requested a meal that included fish, cornbread, cake and soda

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CREATORS: Limiting an Attorney's Access to Client During Trial

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
February 24, 2026

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to render a decision soon in a Texas case that has implications for lawyers representing clients who testify on their own behalf at criminal trials.

David Asa Villarreal was charged with murder in Texas. During his trial, Villarreal took the stand in his own defense. In the middle of being questioned by his attorneys, the court adjourned for the evening. The trial judge instructed Villarreal's attorneys not to confer with him during the overnight break.

The judge told counsel, "I'm going to ask that both of you pretend that Mr. Villarreal is on the stand. You couldn't confer with him during that time." Villarreal's lead counsel objected under the Sixth Amendment to this limitation.

The next day, Villarreal resumed his testimony, and no further objections about the limitation were raised. Villarreal was ultimately convicted and sentenced to sixty years in prison.

Villarreal appealed and his case wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court got involved due to disagreement among state and federal courts on the issue of communication with a testifying client during a recess in testimony.

On one side of the conflict, according to Villarreal's attorneys, "several state supreme courts have held that while the trial court may not prohibit all communications between a testifying defendant and his attorney during an overnight recess, it may prohibit communications specifically about the defendant's ongoing testimony." On the other side, "several federal circuit courts of appeal have held any restriction on communication with counsel during an overnight recess is impermissible."

Villarreal argued to the Supreme Court that the judge's ban on his ability to discuss his testimony with counsel violated his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel.

Attorney-client conversations about testimony are necessary. For instance, counsel may need to advise a client to avoid unwitting perjury; the necessity to recant testimony or corrections in the defendant's testimony that counsel knows is inaccurate.

Additionally, Villarreal asserted that lawyers could use overnight recesses for purposes not directly related to testimony. For example, Villarreal argues that attorneys might need to remind their clients to make a good impression on jurors, such as a change in wardrobe, make eye contact with jurors or sit up straight.

Villarreal argues that decisions in 1976 and 1989 support his position. The 1976 case found that overnight recesses are important times for the defense team to regroup, evaluate the day's events, and make decisions about future proceedings. The 1989 decision held that an order not to talk with a client during a fifteen-minute daytime recess did not violate the Sixth Amendment.

The length of the recess triggers the Sixth Amendment protections. Villarreal argues that a short recess would not infringe on a defendant's right to assistance of counsel, but an overnight bar on talking with a client would violate those constitutional protections.

A criminal trial can be thoroughly unsettling for an accused. The language and cadence of a criminal trial is foreign to even the most learned layperson. A trial recess, even in the midst of a defendant's testimony, is essential to providing emotional support, clarifying legal issues and helping to maintain the defendant's trust in a fair and impartial criminal justice system.

The inability to act in the interest of a client undermines zealous and effective representation focused on protecting the rights of an accused.

To that end, Villarreal argued, "The Sixth Amendment text does not limit counsel's assistance to particular topics or particular times of day." The state cannot argue that the founders in 1791 meant for the word "assistance" to mean "assistance except for discussions of testimony," or "assistance but not overnight."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book, "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Mangino discusses Nancy Guthrie disappearance on Court TV

Watch my interview with Matt Johnson of Court TV discussing the latest developments in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.

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ICE has a 'deficient, defective and broken' training program

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who resigned this month from his job instructing new recruits came forward as a whistle-blower, describing what he said was a “deficient, defective and broken” training program with a pared-back curriculum as the Trump administration races to expand the agency. reported The New York Times.

The account by Ryan Schwank, a former ICE lawyer who worked at the federal government’s law enforcement training academy, coincided with the release by Senate Democrats of several dozen pages of internal ICE records that suggest the Trump administration has curtailed the agency’s basic training.

“For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program,” Mr. Schwank said at a forum held in Washington by congressional Democrats. “Cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 584-hour program — classes that teach the Constitution, our legal system, firearms training, the use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention and the limits of officers’ authority.”

He added: “New cadets are graduating from the academy despite widespread concerns among training staff that even in the final days of training, the cadets cannot demonstrate a solid grasp of the tactics or the law required to perform their jobs.”

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