DeSantis withdraws death warrant for 74-year-old William Thompson

The execution chamber at Florida State Prison. (Via Florida Department of Corrections)Five days before the state of Florida was scheduled to execute 74-year-old William Thompson for the 1976 murder, kidnapping, and rape of 23-year-old woman in Miami-Dade County, Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew his death warrant Thursday.

The governor did not explain why he withdrew the warrant in the letter he sent to Florida State Prison Warden Randall Park, but it came a week after more than 100 medical professionals called on him to do so, noting that Thompson suffers from dementia and additional medical ailments.

DeSantis commissioned a three-psychiatrist panel to examine Thompson’s mental condition, days after he issued the warrant for his execution. In an executive order, he noted that legal counsel for Thompson said that a neuropsychologist had met with him and opined that he was insane due to dementia and significant cognitive decline.

That group of psychiatrists met with Thompson on Oct. 1 and sent the governor a report on Oct. 2.

If that panel determined he was insane, DeSantis said in his executive order, he would declare that he “does not have the mental capacity to understand the nature of the death penalty and the reasons it is to be imposed upon him.”

Instead, Thompson would “be committed to a Department of Corrections mental health treatment facility until such time as he has been restored to sanity and the sentence of death may be executed.”

Thompson had been scheduled to die on Tuesday, Oct. 13, one of two executions scheduled for that day. James Robertson, 63, is set to die for the 2008 murder of his cellmate at the Charlotte Correctional Institution.

Clemency “would not erase his conviction or require agreement about the death penalty,” the group of psychiatrists 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.”

Florida has executed 16 people so far this year, the most of any state in the nation. It executed 19 people in 2025, which was also by far the most for any state.

DeSantis signed a death warrant earlier this week for Jesse Guardado for Nov. 5. He had been sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of 75-year-old woman. He had been indicted for first-degree murder and robbery with a weapon in Walton County and entered a guilty plea without a plea agreement.

DeSantis’ decision to withdraw his death warrant for Thompson came after Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survived two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital. By protocol, after the second failed attempt, she was transported from Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville to the hospital where she remains today, according to the Tennessee Lookout.

President Donald Trump has approved the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan by firing squad, which would be the military’s first execution since 1961 (and apparently will be streamed live).

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering whether to commute sentences for all 563 people on the country’s largest death row before he leaves office in January.