STARKE, Fla. — State prison officials in Florida put a 63-year-old inmate to death Tuesday after he voluntarily dropped his appeals for the 2008 murder of a cellmate, carrying out the country’s first execution since a failed lethal injection two weeks earlier in Tennessee.
James Robertson was pronounced dead at 12:32 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Raiford after receiving a three-drug lethal injection protocol, state officials announced. Jordan Kirkland, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Corrections, told reporters following the procedure that the execution took place without any complications.
Robertson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for strangling his sleeping cellmate, Frank Hart, at Charlotte Correctional Institution near Fort Myers in 2008. Robertson confessed to investigators that he committed the killing unprovoked because he wanted a death sentence rather than spending the remainder of his life in prison. On Oct. 5, a Charlotte County court granted his request to waive all further appeals.
SCRUTINY OVER LETHAL INJECTION PROCEDURES
The execution drew heightened interest following a botched execution attempt on Sept. 30 in Tennessee, where prison staff attempted to put death row inmate Christa Pike to death with two doses of pentobarbital before abandoning the procedure. Pike was hospitalized, discharged on Saturday and returned to prison, according to media reports.
Addressing questions before Robertson’s lethal injection, Kirkland defended Florida’s execution system, describing it as a reliable procedure that state officials are dedicated to administering in a dignified manner. The state Department of Corrections website notes that Florida executions rely on a three-drug series: a sedative, a paralytic and an agent that halts heart function.
Witnesses noted that the execution lasted roughly 10 minutes. When prison officials asked Robertson whether he wished to deliver a final statement from the gurney, he answered, “Nah, I’m straight,” according to independent reporter John Koch, who witnessed the execution.
Hart, who entered prison in 2003 on a sexual battery conviction, was slain just eight days before he was scheduled to be released, his daughter said. Speaking outside the prison facility, Rebecca Hart shared her grief and said her father deserved to be remembered as more than merely a component of Robertson’s legal case.
DESANTIS WITHDRAWS SEPARATE DEATH WARRANT
Robertson was originally one of two prisoners scheduled to die Tuesday in Florida. However, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order Friday withdrawing the death warrant for 74-year-old William Lee Thompson, who was convicted in the 1976 abduction and slaying of Sally Ivester.
The withdrawal marked the first time DeSantis had canceled a signed death warrant. Thompson’s attorneys argued that the inmate suffers from severe dementia, physical decline and mental instability, believing George W. Bush remains the U.S. president. Thompson will stay on death row, leaving open the legal possibility that a future warrant could be authorized.
Robertson became the 17th person put to death in Florida during 2026, accounting for more than half of the 31 executions carried out nationwide so far this year. DeSantis, whose term concludes in January, previously oversaw 19 executions in 2025, matching modern state records.
Two additional executions remain on Florida’s schedule for the coming weeks. William Reaves, 77, is set to be executed Oct. 20 for the 1986 murder of an Indian River County sheriff’s deputy. Jesse Guardado, 64, is scheduled to die on Nov. 5 for a 2004 fatal robbery in Walton County. If both are carried out, the state will equal its 2025 annual record of 19 executions.
