#execution

DeSantis, like his predecessors, makes execution decisions behind closed doors; the state’s Supreme Court has long held that setting execution dates is an exercise of the governor’s executive authority, putting it beyond the reach of the state’s otherwise expansive open-government laws. As a result, there is no way to know what criteria DeSantis uses when he chooses who will be put to death, a Tampa-based attorney with the A.C.L.U.’s Capital Punishment Project, Maria DeLiberato, told me. “He could be deciding who is next to die by throwing darts at a list of names,” she said, “or spinning a roulette wheel.”

The secrecy surrounding those decisions has left victims’ families, prisoners and their lawyers searching for clues about what principles, if any, guide DeSantis’s selection process. How long a prisoner has spent on death row does not appear to be a deciding factor; DeSantis has bypassed prisoners who committed their crimes as far back as the 1970s, scheduling the executions of men convicted of murders committed decades later. With no obvious overarching logic governing who is chosen next, the process has become a contest to attract—or avoid—his attention.

In March, after the execution of a man named Billy Kearse by lethal injection took roughly twice as long as usual, lawyers for another man on death row, Chadwick Willacy, filed a public records request seeking information about the state’s execution protocol. A week later, DeSantis signed Willacy’s death warrant. That timing introduced more fear and uncertainty into an already opaque process. Lawyers representing condemned prisoners were left to wonder whether every legal challenge they raised risked drawing the governor’s scrutiny—and whether vigorous advocacy, intended to save a client’s life, could instead move him closer to death.

INDIANA – On June 5th, 2026 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld Indiana law prohibiting journalists from witnessing state executions in a divided 2-1 decision. Beyond the prison warden, medical staff and up to eight members of the victim’s family, state law limits execution witnesses to up to five family members or friends of the convicted person and their spiritual adviser…

On 9th July 1942, nine members of the resistance group De Oranjewacht, [The Orange Guard], (Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands and the name of the Royal family) were shot in the Fort near Rijnauwen, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Two trials were conducted against the resistance group, and nine members were sentenced to death. On the same day, two so-called Engelandvaarders, (England…