Florida on Thursday raised to 17 the number of executions carried out in the state, after applying the death penalty to Richard Barry Randolph, convicted in 1989 for the murder of a woman in East Palatka, in the northeastern part of the state.
The execution of Richard Barry Randolph, 63, was carried out at 18:12 local time (22:12 GMT) at the Florida State Prison near Starke in northern Florida, the Florida Department of Corrections said.
Florida executes Richard Barry Randolph
https://t.co/DMFWECG8hw pic.twitter.com/HMiGd1yG3H
– FADP (@FADPorg) November 21, 2025
It was the 17th execution of the year and the seventh execution of a veteran in 2025.
Randolph was convicted of the murder, armed robbery and rape of a manager when he attempted to rob the safe of a supply store where he had previously worked in Putnam County.
The prisoner’s lawyers had tried to stop the execution by arguing that their client suffers from lupus, a condition that they said could be cruel punishment for the condemned man because of the effects that the mixture of drugs in the lethal injection can have on him.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected their arguments, asserting that the claim “is untimely”.
In addition to Randolph’s execution, the state of Florida has two others scheduled before the end of the year.
This would bring to 19 the number of executions in 2025, an all-time record for Florida, which had not carried out the death penalty on more than eight people in a single year since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
To date, at least 44 people have been executed this year in the United States.
Florida is by far the leading state on that list, followed by Texas, Alabama and South Carolina, with five deaths each.
Florida authorities have made several decisions in recent years to favor the application of the death penalty.
Among them is a law passed in 2023 that made the state the only one, along with Alabama, in which a unanimous jury decision is not required to recommend capital punishment.
Florida is also the state in which the fewest jury votes are required to recommend a death sentence: eight out of twelve members are sufficient.
With information from EFE
