USA
This Tuesday, the United States surpassed the death penalty figures of 2014, when 35 were recorded. After Florida, with a record so far this century, it is followed by Texas, with five executions, and South Carolina and Alabama, with four each.
Con 37 executions so far in 2025, This Tuesday, the United States surpassed the figures of 2014, when 35 were registered, while Florida leads the rebound with 14 deathsits highest number in decades.
Florida applied the capital punishment this Tuesday to Samuel Smithers, condemned by 1996 murder of two women whom he paid for sexual relations, while Missouri executed Lance Shockley, 48 years old, for murder of a sergeant in 2005.
Smithers, 72, was executed at Florida State Prison in Raiford by lethal injectionas reported by the Florida Department of Corrections.
Record numbers in Florida
With this punishment, the state of Florida raised to 14 the number of executions carried out so far this year, a record for Florida so far this century.
Since the United States Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, Florida had not exceeded eight executions in a single year, a figure it reached in 2014.
They follow him behind Texas, with five executions, and South Carolina and Alabama, with four each, amid a general rebound in the use of the death penalty in the United States, after several years with less frequent executions, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
The case of Smithers, who became one of the oldest people executed in Florida, dates back to the 1996 murder of two women in Tampa, whom he brutally beat, strangled and dumped in a pond, according to legal documents. At that time, the inmate carried out garden maintenance tasks.
The Florida Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Smithers last week, including arguments that his age made him ineligible for the death penalty under the US constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Smithers received a lethal injection, the method by which executions are carried out in the state, whose protocol uses three drugs: a sedative, a paralytic, and a medicine that stops the heart.
Its use has been controversial due to the risks of physical suffering during execution, errors in the application of drugs and the ethical debate over whether it really constitutes a ‘humane’ method of death penalty.
With this execution, Florida reaffirmed itself as the state that uses the death penalty the most in the country. The governor, the republican Ron DeSantishas approved so far 16 executions for this year.
The next scheduled executions are those of the prisoners Norman Grim (October 29) and Bryan Jennings (November 13)both convicted of murder in Florida.
Meanwhile, Missouri executed Shockley, who was convicted of killing State Highway Patrol Sergeant Carl Dewayne Graham Jr. in March 2005.
At least nine more executions are scheduled for this year in the country.
Meanwhile, although the state of Ohio, unlike the rest, has already issued execution orders for the next three years, with 27 scheduled, its governor, Republican Mike DeWine, indicated that they will not be carried out if a new method is not adopted, describing lethal injection in 2020 as “impossible from a practical point of view.”