A 53-year-old man found guilty of killing a police officer in 1991 is set to be executed on Tuesday evening in Florida, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. This will be the fifth execution carried out in the United States since the beginning of the year and the third in Florida. The most recent execution took place on February 25th, when Melvin Trotter, convicted of a murder in June 1986, was executed by lethal injection.
Billy Kearse is scheduled to receive a lethal injection starting at 6 p.m. (midnight in France) at the Florida State Prison. At the age of 18, he fatally wounded a police officer with the officer’s service weapon during a traffic stop in January 1991. Initially sentenced to death in 1991, he was retried in 1997 and again received the death penalty.
Last year, 19 people were executed in Florida, more than in any other American state. Republican governor Ron DeSantis, who bears the ultimate responsibility of signing the execution warrants of the condemned, oversaw more executions last year than any other governor of Florida since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. in 1976.
Five other executions planned in March
Two other executions are currently scheduled in Florida, on the 17th and 31st of March. Executions are also planned in March in Texas (the 11th), Alabama (the 12th) for a 75-year-old death row inmate, and in Pennsylvania (the 24th), unless Democratic governor Josh Shapiro, who is opposed to the death penalty, grants a reprieve.
In total, 47 death row inmates have been executed in the U.S. in 2025, the highest level since 2009 (52). The death penalty has been abolished in 23 out of the 50 American states.
