Florida puts man to death as three US states schedule executions on same day

Florida put a man to death on Thursday evening in its record-tying 19th execution of the year, part of an unusual day on which three US states carried out or prepared to carry out death sentences.

Jesse Guardado was pronounced dead at 6.13pm following a three-drug injection at a state prison in Starke, the governor's office said. Guardado had pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing a 75-year-old woman inside her Walton county home in 2004, then stealing her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs. The woman had previously helped him secure a job and housing.

Hours earlier, Indiana executed Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, who was pronounced dead at 12.45am at the state prison in Michigan City, according to Noelle Russell, a spokesperson for the state department of correction. Russell said he had no final words. Weisheit had acknowledged killing his girlfriend's two children in a house fire in the Evansville area in 2010, but had hoped governor Mike Braun would grant clemency and change his sentence to life in prison. Braun declined.

In Alabama, Michael Taylor, 54, was set to die by lethal injection later on Thursday evening. In 1991, when he was 19, Taylor beat two people, aged 83 and 79, to death with a metal bar during a robbery in their home in Gadsden. Death penalty opponents had urged the state's Republican governor, Kay Ivey, to reduce his sentence to life in prison, but she declined.

"If the state kills Michael, it is not the 19-year-old who made the worst mistake of his life whom it kills. But the mature, well-respected, God-fearing man sitting in that cell today," said Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The executions fell on the same day that California's governor, Gavin Newsom, announced he would commute all 548 death sentences in his state, saying he believed "state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values." The announcement stood in sharp contrast to Florida, where outgoing Republican governor Ron DeSantis has made aggressive use of capital punishment like few other governors. His state has accounted for more than half of the 34 executions carried out in the US so far this year.

It was the second time since August that three states were set to conduct executions on a single day, though the occurrence remains rare. Before this year, it had not happened since 2010.

Capital punishment in the US has faced renewed scrutiny since September, when Tennessee's attempted execution of Christa Pike failed after she survived two massive doses of pentobarbital. Courts have nonetheless rejected efforts to halt other executions.

In Indiana, lawyers for Weisheit failed to persuade the governor to allow brain scans to assess a history of head injuries and mental health problems. His final objection centered on the state's planned use of lethal drugs purchased from a pharmacy facing a disciplinary hearing next week before the Indiana pharmacy board, the state regulatory agency. Attorney general Todd Rokita said the execution provided "long-awaited justice for Alyssa Lynch and her brother Caleb, two innocent children whose lives were stolen in an act of unspeakable cruelty."

Taylor's case also drew last-minute challenges. Alabama planned to execute him by lethal injection after a judge declared the state's nitrogen gas method unconstitutional. His attorneys objected to the switch because he had selected nitrogen gas as his method several years ago, but a judge ruled against him. Alabama executed murderer Kenneth Smith by nitrogen asphyxiation in 2024, an episode witnesses found excruciating, after previously failing in an attempt to kill him by lethal injection.