A third execution in Florida since the beginning of the year, the fifth in the United States. Billy Kearse, 53, is set to receive a lethal injection on Tuesday, March 3 around 11 p.m., French time, at the Florida state prison.
At the age of 18, Billy Kearse fatally wounded a police officer with the officer’s service weapon during a traffic stop in January 1991. Sentenced to death for the first time in 1991, he was retried in 1997 and again given the death penalty. Last year, 19 people were executed in Florida, more than any other American state.
47 executions in the United States in 2025
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who bears the ultimate responsibility for signing the execution orders of the condemned, oversaw more executions last year than any other Florida governor since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States in 1976.
Two other executions are currently scheduled in Florida, on March 17 and 31, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). Executions are also planned in March in Texas (March 11), Alabama (March 12) for a 75-year-old wheelchair-bound death row inmate, and in Pennsylvania (March 24) unless Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, who is opposed to the death penalty, grants a reprieve to the condemned.
In total, 47 death row inmates were executed in the United States last year, the highest level since 2009 (52). The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 American states.
