How Florida is becoming more of an ‘outlier’ on capital punishment

Public support for the death penalty has trended downward since the mid-‘90s, according to Gallup. A poll released in November found that support for the practice in the U.S. hovered at 53%, its lowest level since 1972, when the Supreme Court temporarily banned capital punishment.

Researchers at Gallup have found that the percentages of Democrats and independents who support the death penalty have decreased significantly in eight years, particularly among younger generations. Republican support for the practice has remained fairly steady, with support among younger Republicans declining slightly.

Twenty-seven states, including Florida, allow the death penalty; governors in four of those states have paused executions. Overall, Florida is becoming “more and more an outlier on the death penalty,” said Megan Byrne, a senior staff attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project.

Florida’s death warrant process in particular is opaque, several experts and death penalty opponents told PBS News.

According to an analysis from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) on how different states issue death warrants, Florida stands out for empowering the governor alone — and not a state Supreme Court or state court of criminal appeals — to select people on death row and setting their execution date.

It’s “a single person, one person in the executive, one governor deciding,” Byrne said.

Last year, DeSantis signed one death warrant. So far in 2025, he’s signed 12.

That uptick in signed warrants this year, alongside longstanding concerns over transparency, has led to heightened scrutiny over the process.

After DeSantis issued a death warrant in July for Bates, attorneys for the 67-year-old Black man tried through several last-minute appeals to block the execution through the courts. Among the legal challenges was a federal lawsuit against DeSantis, arguing that the death warrant process under the governor is “infected with racial discrimination and arbitrariness.”

The governor, responding to the lawsuit, said it should be dismissed, in part because of “incomplete statistics provided.”

“There is neither a discriminatory effect nor a discriminatory purpose in the Governor’s warrant selection,” the governor’s motion read.

“I support capital punishment because I think there are some crimes that are just so horrific the only appropriate punishment is the death penalty,” DeSantis said at a May news conference. “When you see these things across your desk, these are brutal, brutal crimes.”

One of the witnesses to Bates’ death by lethal ejection was the widower of Janet Renee White, the woman he killed, who said the execution was “a relief” and decadeslong justice for her.

Two more executions are on Florida’s calendar. Curtis Windom is scheduled to be executed at Florida State Prison next week. David Pittman’s execution is set for mid-September.