Three US states carry out the death penalty on the same day - every second execution in Florida

In the USA, the death penalty was carried out in three states within one day, a few weeks after the failed execution of Christa Pike.

Two men were executed in Indiana and Florida on Thursday, the respective correctional authorities announced. The Indiana convict killed two children in a house fire in 2010. According to media reports, a 54-year-old man who was convicted of a fatal robbery at a residential building was executed in Alabama.

“Three executions in one day are rare in today’s death penalty era,” wrote USA Today. Such a triple execution had already taken place in August, and the last time before that was 16 years ago. All three men died from a lethal injection.

Pike, who was convicted of murder, was scheduled to be executed in Tennessee at the end of September. She survived and woke up days later in a hospital. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there is no comparable case known in recent US history in which the execution drugs were administered and the condemned person lived on. Pike's case has reignited the debate over the death penalty in the United States.

In Florida, 64-year-old Jesse Guardado died from a three-drug injection at a state prison in Starke. He was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. local time. Guardado had pleaded guilty to stabbing a 75-year-old woman to death in her Walton County home in 2004. He then stole her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs. The woman had previously helped him get a job and an apartment.

Asked for any final words, Guardado said: "I would like to apologize once again for the pain and suffering I have caused the victim's family and also my own family." The US Supreme Court rejected his latest request on Thursday afternoon without explanation.

It was the 19th execution in Florida this year, as many as in the record year of 2025. Two more are scheduled for the end of the year. Florida accounts for more than half of the 34 executions that have taken place in the United States so far this year.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who leaves office in January, uses the death penalty like no other governor. He has said he wants to bring justice to the victims' families, who have waited decades for the sentences to be carried out.

In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the same day that all 548 death sentences in the state would be commuted to life in prison. He is taking the step out of the belief that state-sanctioned killings are inconsistent with California values ​​and undermine the foundations of the legal system, Newsom wrote in a letter to residents. No one has been executed in California since 2006.

Even before the Pike case, several governors had commuted death sentences in their states to life imprisonment in recent years. In 2024, then-President Joe Biden ordered this for the majority of those sentenced to death at the federal level.

The 50 states continue to approach the death penalty differently: almost half have abolished it, and a few carry out the majority of executions in the country.