Indiana executes man as Florida and Alabama plan executions later Thursday

Weisheit, 50, was pronounced dead at 12.45am at the state prison in Michigan City, said Noelle Russell, a spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Correction. He had no final words, she said.

Weisheit had acknowledged killing his girlfriend’s two children, Alyssa and Caleb Lynch, in a house fire near Evansville in 2010. He had asked Governor Mike Braun for clemency, seeking a life sentence instead, but Braun declined.

Lawyers for Weisheit had also requested that the governor allow brain scans to assess a history of head injuries and mental health problems. The last objection centred on Indiana’s planned use of lethal drugs purchased from a pharmacy facing a disciplinary hearing next week before the state pharmacy board.

The execution provided “long-awaited justice for Alyssa Lynch and her brother Caleb, two innocent children whose lives were stolen in an act of unspeakable cruelty”, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said.

Florida plans to execute Jesse Guardado later Thursday. Guardado, 64, was convicted of fatally stabbing a 75-year-old woman inside her Walton County home in 2004 before stealing her jewellery box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs. The woman had helped him get a job and housing. A court has turned down his appeal.

Alabama intends to execute Michael Taylor by lethal injection. Taylor, 54, beat two people, aged 83 and 79, to death with a metal bar during a 1991 robbery in Gadsden. Governor Kay Ivey declined a request from death penalty opponents to reduce his sentence to life in prison.

Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty said: “If the state kills Michael, it is not the 19-year-old who made the worst mistake of his life whom it kills. But the mature, well-respected, God-fearing man sitting in that cell today.”

Taylor had selected nitrogen gas as his execution method several years earlier, but a judge declared that method unconstitutional and the state plans to use lethal injection. Taylor’s attorneys objected to the last-minute change, but a judge ruled against him. Alabama executed Kenneth Smith in 2024 by nitrogen asphyxiation in a procedure witnesses described as excruciating, after an earlier failed attempt by lethal injection.

If both executions proceed, Florida will have carried out its 19th execution this year under Governor Ron DeSantis, matching a record set in 2025. It would be the second time this year three people have been put to death on the same day in the United States.

The death penalty has faced renewed scrutiny since September, when Christa Pike in Tennessee survived two massive doses of pentobarbital in a botched execution.