Attorney: Botched Tennessee execution should ‘force reckoning’ in Florida

Emergency vehicles at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. The execution of death row inmate Christa Pike was halted nearly two hours after the state of Tennessee began the lethal injection protocol. (Photo by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant Thursday, scheduling James Robertson’s execution for Oct. 13, the same day his administration plans to execute William Lee Thompson.

They would be the 17th and 18th executions this year and the second time this year that Florida would execute two inmates on the same day.

The governor’s warrant came just after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee placed a moratorium executions in his state after Tennessee correctional officials failed to complete an execution for the second time in five months.

Now a capital defense attorney says what happened in Tennessee should “force an urgent reckoning” in Florida, specifically citing the various ailments the 74-year-old Thompson is suffering.

“Thompson’s medical conditions raise serious concerns about what could happen during an attempted lethal injection,” said Maria DeLiberato, legal and policy director for Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

In a recent court filing, attorneys for Thompson say he suffers an array of health problems, including sepsis, chronic kidney disease, severe fatty liver disease, and acute systolic congestive heart failure. He has staples in his abdomen from a recent colostomy surgery and staples in his head following a fall. He also suffers from dementia.

Thompson’s poor health compelled more than 100 medical professionals this week to sign a letter calling on DeSantis to withdraw Thompson’s death warrant.

“Doing so would not erase his conviction or require agreement about the death penalty,” they wrote. “It would recognize that executing a gravely ill man with profound cognitive impairment is incompatible with the most basic obligations of medicine, human dignity, and mercy.”

“Mr. Thompson appears to be in the final stages of physical and cognitive decline,” they continued. “He should spend his remaining days receiving appropriate medical treatment and compassionate care — not facing execution while his body and mind are failing.”

Thompson was sentenced to death 50 years ago for the 1976 murder, kidnapping, and rape of 23-year-old woman in Miami-Dade County. His co-defendant, Rocco Surace, also was sentenced to death, but his conviction was overturned on appeal. He was sentenced to life in prison after a retrial and died in prison in the 1990s.

Thompson’s 1976 death sentence was overturned on appeal. In a later resentencing, a jury voted 7-5 to recommend a death sentence. (Existing Florida law requires a minimum of eight jurors for a death sentence).

Robertson pleaded guilty and was convicted of first-degree murder in Charlotte County for murdering his cellmate in Charlotte Correctional Institution in December 2008.

The state executed 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhione and James Aren Duckett, 68 on July 28. That was the first time the state executed two people on the same day since 1964.

And the state of Florida executed 77-year-old Curtis Wilkie Beasley by lethal injection earlier this week, marking the state’s 16th execution this year and the seventh prisoner over age 70 executed this year. Beasley was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery, and grand theft auto in the 1995 hammer attack on a woman at her home south of Orlando.

Yet another execution is scheduled in Florida later this month, on Oct. 20. William Reaves Jr. was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for killing an Indian River County sheriff;s deputy in September 1986.

If that execution takes place, it would be the 19th this year, tying the most executions in Florida in one year set in 2025.

In Tennessee 

Meanwhile, Christa Pike, who was scheduled to be the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than two centuries, remains critically ill and under treatment at a Nashville hospital following her botched execution Wednesday.  She remains intubated, on a ventilator, and is unconscious, according to a court filing Friday by her attorneys in a Tennessee court.

Pike came before that same Tennessee court nine months ago, her attorneys warning that her execution would constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Tennessee and U.S. constitutions.

They specifically argued her physical characteristics, including thrombocytosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, and small veins “make it sure or very likely that there is a substantial risk that she will experience unnecessary and superadded pain and suffering, terror, and disgrace.” Furthermore, they cited her history of “difficulty with blood draws and needle insertion.”

A Tennessee Department of Corrections team attempted to gain IV access by using at least seven needles.

It was the second time in five months that Tennessee correction officials failed to perform an execution. In May, physicians tried and failed for more than an hour to insert intravenous lines to begin the lethal injection process for Tony Carruthers.

Maria DeLiberato of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty was Carruthers’ attorney and witnessed his botched execution, as she wrote about in a New York Times op-ed in June.

She says William Thompson’s debilitating state should lead Gov. DeSantis to call off his execution.

“Thompson’s medical conditions raise serious concerns about what could happen during an attempted lethal injection,” she said Thursday in a written statement. “The spectacle we have now seen in Tennessee could repeat in Florida. We have been warned, and there is still time to prevent it.”