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Florida executes 77-year-old man, marking state's 18th execution of 2025

Confirmed1 source · Oct 20, 2026

William Reaves was put to death for the 1986 shooting of a deputy, part of Florida's accelerated execution pace under Governor Ron DeSantis.

Florida executes 77-year-old man, marking state's 18th execution of 2025
Image via The Guardian

What happened

William Reaves, 77, was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday at Florida State Prison near Starke for the September 1986 first-degree murder of Indian River County deputy Richard Raczkowski. Reaves shot Raczkowski four times during a struggle over a weapon that fell from Reaves' shorts while the deputy responded to a 911 call Reaves had placed at a Vero Beach convenience store. Reaves was convicted and sentenced to death in 1992 after his initial conviction was overturned due to prosecutorial conflict of interest. The US Supreme Court rejected his final appeal on Tuesday; the three-drug lethal injection was administered at 6pm, and Reaves was pronounced dead at 6:12pm after showing no response to medical checks.

Context

Florida has carried out its 18th execution of 2025 and has carried out more than half the executions in the US so far this year. A total of 47 people were executed in the US in 2025. Florida is on track to tie or exceed its state record of 19 executions in a single year set in 2024. Governor DeSantis, in his final term before leaving office in January, has stated his goal is to deliver justice to victims' families awaiting the carrying out of decades-old death sentences. Reaves was the eighth person over age 70 executed in Florida this year, reflecting an aging death-row population across the nation. Defense attorneys raised two challenges before execution: Florida's three-drug injection protocol, which the state supreme court has previously upheld; and the fact that jurors were never informed that Reaves, a Vietnam War veteran, was rated 100% disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder. Over 100 veterans sent a letter to DeSantis urging him to stop the execution. Jesse Guardado, 64, is scheduled for execution on November 5.