Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida’s death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term, saying too many families have waited too long to see justice.
The lethal injections just hours apart were the first nearly back-to-back executions since Arkansas put two men to death three hours apart in 2017.
Record execution numbers for governor’s final two years.
DeSantis hasn’t said why he scheduled two executions hours apart. And he has rarely commented on the pace of executions, previously noting some on death row had committed crimes as far back as the 1980s.
“Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly,” the governor said last year.
Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, the last being in 1964.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied last appeals from both men Tuesday and the Florida Supreme Court last week.
All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
