William Reaves was convicted of first-degree murder for the shooting of Deputy Richard Raczkowski, who had responded to a 911 call at a Vero Beach convenience store in September 1986. According to court records, a gun fell from Reaves's shorts while the two spoke, and Reaves regained control of the weapon during a struggle, shooting the deputy four times as he tried to run away.
Reaves was initially convicted and sentenced to death in 1987, but the Florida Supreme Court overturned the conviction due to a conflict of interest with the prosecutor. He was tried again and sentenced to death in 1992. The US Supreme Court rejected his final appeal on Tuesday without comment. The Florida Supreme Court had also rejected his appeals the previous week.
When asked by the warden if he had a last statement, Reaves replied, "No, I do not." The drug injection began immediately after, and he was pronounced dead roughly twelve minutes later, at 6:12 pm.
The execution is the latest in an aggressive push by Governor Ron DeSantis, who leaves office in January after two terms. DeSantis has said his goal is to deliver justice to victims' families who have waited decades for sentences to be carried out. Florida executed 19 prisoners last year, a state record, and has been responsible for more than half of the 32 executions carried out nationwide so far this year. Reaves was the eighth Florida prisoner over the age of 70 put to death this year, reflecting the nation's aging death row population. In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state to do so in nearly a decade.
In the final appeals, Reaves's attorneys raised several issues. They challenged Florida's three-drug lethal injection protocol, which differs from the single-drug method used by states such as Tennessee, where a death row inmate was rushed to the hospital after surviving two lethal doses of pentobarbital. They also argued that the jurors who recommended the death penalty were not told that the Department of Veterans Affairs rated Reaves, an army veteran of the Vietnam War, as 100 per cent disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder. More than 100 veterans sent Governor DeSantis a letter on Monday urging him to halt the execution.
Another execution is scheduled for next month. Jesse Guardado, 64, is set to die by injection on November 5 for the 2004 murder of a woman.