Florida executed James Robertson, 63, on Tuesday at Florida State Prison in Raiford, ending a case in which the inmate admitted he killed his own cellmate specifically to guarantee himself a death sentence.
Robertson died roughly 10 minutes after corrections officials administered a three-drug lethal injection. Asked if he had any final words, he declined, saying only, “Nah, I’m straight.”
Robertson had pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for strangling cellmate Frank Hart while Hart slept in 2008. He waived all appeals and told investigators outright that he committed the murder so the state would execute him rather than let him serve out his sentence. Hart was killed just eight days before he was scheduled to be released.
Hart’s daughter, Rebecca Hart, spoke to reporters outside the prison and pushed back on reducing her father to a footnote in Robertson’s case.
“When someone you love is taken from you in such a violent way, the world keeps moving, even when a part of yours feels like it has stopped,” she said. “Other people go on with their lives, but you carry your loss into every tomorrow.”
Hart had been sentenced to prison in 2003 for sexual battery. Robertson’s own criminal record stretched back to 1980, when he was sent to prison at age 17 for burglary and assault; later convictions for escape, battery and weapons offenses kept him behind bars for decades.
State Department of Corrections spokesperson Jordan Kirkland addressed reporters ahead of the execution, drawing a line between Florida’s procedures and a botched execution in Tennessee two weeks earlier, in which inmate Christa Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital and was hospitalized before being returned to prison.
“Florida has a sound lethal injection process and protocol,” Kirkland said, adding that while he could not speak to Tennessee’s protocol, Florida’s process would remain “humane and dignified.”
Florida’s lethal injection method uses a sedative, a paralytic, and a drug that stops the heart.
A second execution called off
Florida had originally scheduled two executions for Tuesday. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew the death warrant last week for William Lee Thompson, 74, sentenced to death for the 1976 kidnapping and killing of 23-year-old Sally Ivester. Thompson was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual battery in that case.
DeSantis gave no public reason for pulling the warrant. He had already issued a temporary stay last month pending a psychiatric evaluation, after Thompson’s attorneys raised concerns about his mental competency and said he suffers from dementia and failing health, requesting he be moved to a medical facility. This marks the first time DeSantis has withdrawn a death warrant. Thompson stays on death row, and the state could issue a new warrant later.
DeSantis is the third Florida governor to sign a death warrant against Thompson. Govs. Bob Graham and Bob Martinez both scheduled his execution in the 1980s, but Thompson avoided the electric chair — Florida’s method at the time — through years of appeals and stays.
Executions accelerating under DeSantis
Robertson’s death was Florida’s 17th execution of 2026. In July, the state carried out two executions in a single day for the first time in nearly a decade.
DeSantis has signed a steady stream of death warrants since 2025, and last year the state carried out a record 19 executions — the most by any Florida governor in a single year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, and roughly 40% of all U.S. executions in 2025. Nationwide, 47 executions were carried out last year, the highest annual total since 2009.
So far in 2026, Florida accounts for more than half of the nation’s 31 total executions. Two more are already on the calendar: William Reaves, 77, convicted of fatally shooting a deputy in 1986, is set to be executed Oct. 20, and Jesse Guardado, 64, convicted of robbing and killing a woman to buy drugs in 2004, is scheduled for execution Nov. 5.
