Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for the first in his two-term administration, withdrew the death warrant of an inmate who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection earlier this month.
Groups such as Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the Catholic Mobilizing Network and the Action Network were among those pressing the governor to spare William Lee Thompson, 74, in part because of terminal medical conditions including sepsis, dementia and heart, liver and kidney disease.
DeSantis has yet to offer a public explanation for rescinding Thompson’s death warrant a week before the Oct. 13 execution.
But the move came shortly after the infamously botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee. Pike, 50, survived multiple attempted IV insertions and two doses of pentobarbital Sept. 30 without dying. Instead, she spent a period on life support before reviving and eventually being returned to Death Row. The incident led Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to cancel all executions the remainder of the year and to order an investigation into the state’s lethal injection procedures and drugs.
It is unknown if concern about Florida’s lethal injection protocols promoted DeSantis’ decision to rescind Thompson’s death warrant, but whatever the cause it didn’t last long as the execution of James Robertson went forward Oct. 16 as planned and Williams Reaves Jr. was set for execution Oct. 20.
Thompson underwent a medical evaluation the week after his attorneys challenged his competency for execution, according to Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The results have not been disclosed.
“Withdrawing the death warrant for William Thompson was the correct decision. Mr. Thompson is gravely ill, not competent and intellectually disabled. His execution would have been an abject violation of the Eighth Amendment and an affront to human dignity,” said Grace Hanna, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops urged DeSantis ahead of the execution to spare Thompson, citing not only his declining health but also his “low intelligence” and because murderers retain human dignity. “We commend the governor’s action and note that, in this case especially, taking the life of a disabled and dying man would diminish us all,” the bishops said following DeSantis’ action.
Capital punishment took center stage nationally and worldwide recently after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, a former military psychiatrist who perpetrated a deadly mass shooting on a U.S. Army base in 2009.
Pope Leo XIV declared the death penalty to be “inadmissible” while the nation’s Catholic bishops described Hegseth’s plan as a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” Republicans and Democrats alike condemned the idea as both dishonorable and capable of inspiring terrorist attacks against Americans, Politico reported.
“I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do,” said U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. “America is better than that.”
President Donald Trump later canceled the livestream of the execution.
But DeSantis has been trending back into the spotlight, as well, given that he sanctioned 19 executions in 2025 and already has signed 20 death warrants this year, including Thompson’s. If Reaves is executed Oct. 20 as scheduled, he will be the 18th person to die in Florida’s death house in 2026, according to figures from the Death Penalty Information Center.
So far this year, 31 inmates have been executed by six states. After Florida, Texas leads with seven followed by Oklahoma with three, Alabama with two and Arizona and Tennessee each with one. In addition to Pike, Tennessee also botched the execution of Tony Carruthers in April. Altogether, eight more executions are scheduled before the end of the year, including two in Texas, two in Florida, one in Indiana and one in Oklahoma.
Hispanic faith leaders in Florida went on the offensive in an all-out effort to convince DeSantis to place an immediate pause of executions.
“Our communities hold firmly to the belief that human life is to be protected from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death,” the Latino advocacy group Mission Talk said in an Oct. 13 letter signed by more than 80 chaplains, teachers, pastors and other church leaders.
“It is especially troubling to consider who is being executed. Among them are people whose stories trouble our conscience. Military veterans who served this country have gone to the death chamber. So have people the courts themselves recognized as suffering from extreme mental or emotional disturbance. So have elderly and infirm prisoners, so diminished by age and decades of incarceration that they can no longer bathe or dress without help.”
The group stressed their concern and support for the victims of violent crime but added that Florida’s exoneration of 30 people raises questions about the guilt of those being put to death at such high rates.
“A pause will allow Florida to reckon honestly with what is being done, to sit with the doubt it cannot fully put to rest, to weigh the true cost borne by surviving families, to take account of the full life of each person on Death Row, and to leave room for the mercy and restoration that God has not yet finished offering.”