Florida Executes William Reaves, Its 18th Execution This Year

Updated 22:38 UTC

Florida executed William Reaves by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford on Tuesday evening. He was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. Eastern, Florida Department of Corrections spokesman Jordan Kirkland said in a briefing at the prison, TCPalm reported. Asked if he had last words, Reaves said, "No. I do not." His last meal was crackers and juice. Reaves woke at 5 a.m., remained compliant, received four visitors, his sister, his nephew, his brother and a friend, and met with a spiritual adviser, Kirkland said. Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers attended the briefing. The execution was Florida's 18th this year, and the United States Supreme Court had denied Reaves a stay earlier on Tuesday.

Florida is set to execute William Reaves by lethal injection on Tuesday, October 20, at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. It would be the state's 18th execution this year under Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has used the death penalty more aggressively than any recent Florida governor in his final term in office.

Reaves, 77, was sentenced to death for the 1986 murder of Indian River County Deputy Richard Raczkowski. He would be the eighth prisoner over the age of 70 executed in Florida this year, a run of cases that has drawn attention to the age of the nation's death row population.

The 1986 killing

On September 23, 1986, Raczkowski, 29, responded to a 911 call at a convenience store near Vero Beach. Reaves had placed the call himself from a payphone outside the store. While the two men spoke, a gun fell out of Reaves' shorts. The men struggled over the weapon, Reaves regained control of it, and as the deputy tried to run away, Reaves shot him four times. Raczkowski died from his wounds. Reaves was arrested days later.

A jury convicted Reaves of first-degree murder in September 1987 and he was sentenced to death. The Florida Supreme Court threw out that conviction in 1991 after it emerged that a prosecutor at his trial had once represented him as a defense lawyer. A second jury convicted him again in 1992, and he has been on death row since.

A record pace

Florida set a state record with 19 executions last year. If Reaves is executed on Tuesday and the next scheduled execution goes ahead on November 5, when Jesse Guardado, 64, is set to die for a 2004 murder committed during a robbery, Florida would tie that record. The state has carried out more than half of the 31 executions recorded in the United States so far this year. A total of 47 people were executed across the country in all of 2025.

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, has said his goal is to bring justice to victims' families who have waited decades for death sentences to be carried out. All Florida executions use a three-drug lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

The appeal for mercy

Reaves is an Army veteran who served as an infantry machine gunner in Vietnam, arriving in November 1969 at age 20. His lawyers argued in his final appeals that the jurors who recommended his death sentence were never told the Department of Veterans Affairs had rated him 100 percent disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his service. The Florida Supreme Court rejected his final appeals last week, including a challenge to the state's lethal injection method. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his requests for a stay and for a review of his case early Tuesday afternoon.

On Monday, more than 100 military veterans sent DeSantis a letter asking him to stop the execution. They wrote that the country owes service members a duty not to abandon them when they come home carrying wounds that cannot be seen. DeSantis has not announced any intervention.