A Call for Mercy and Reason: Governor DeSantis Stop Ronald Heath’s Execution!
On February 10, 2026, at 6:00 p.m., the State of Florida plans to execute Ronald Heath for a murder committed in 1989…nearly 37 years ago. This will mark Florida’s first execution of 2026, following an unprecedented year in which Florida carried out 19 executions…a record number in a single year for the state and one of the highest totals nationally in 2025. Governor DeSantis has the power to stop this execution, and the facts of Ronald Heath’s case…combined with deeply troubling evidence about Florida’s execution protocol…demand that he do so.
A Killing Machine Operating Beyond Its Limits
Make no mistake: Florida’s execution machinery is breaking down before our eyes. Nineteen executions in a single year represents not justice, but industrial death. While most states have either abolished capital punishment or carry out executions rarely if at all, Florida’s accelerated pace of executions in 2025 was an outlier nationally and far above the national average. This is not a distinction to celebrate. It is a stain that will mark this era long after the headlines fade.
And the evidence of this system’s collapse is now undeniable. According to Ronald Heath’s application for stay of execution filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida Department of Corrections records reveal a pattern of protocol violations so disturbing they should stop us all in our tracks. These aren’t administrative hiccups. These are constitutional violations documented in the state’s own handwriting.
The records tell a story of chaos masquerading as procedure:
- Expired drugs pumped into human veins months after their expiration dates
- Incorrect dosages that turn execution into torture
- Unauthorized drugs added on the fly, suggesting improvisation in the death chamber
- Mishandling and improper storage of lethal chemicals
- Failure to contemporaneously document key steps of the execution process
On multiple occasions in 2025, Florida used etomidate…the drug meant to render inmates unconscious before death…with an expiration date of January 31, 2025, in executions carried out in August and September of that year. This isn’t a clerical error. This is the state of Florida knowingly using degraded chemicals on human beings as they die, violating its own protocols and basic standards of decency.
During the execution of Thomas Gudinas on June 24, 2025, inventory logs show only 10 vials of the paralytic drug rocuronium bromide were removed when the protocol requires 20 vials…suggesting Florida prepared only half the required dose. During the execution of Anthony Wainwright on June 10, 2025, only 7 vials of potassium acetate were removed when 12 are required. In the executions of Edward James and Michael Tanzi, Florida administered lidocaine…a drug not called for in any approved protocol…suggesting execution teams are making up procedures as they go.
And we know what happens when these protocols fail. During at least one recent execution, witnesses watched as an inmate labored for 20 minutes before dying, moving well into the execution when movement is not expected…suggesting severe malfunction in the administration of the drugs and indicating distress.
This is what torture looks like. This is what happens when a state cares more about speed than humanity.
Ronald Heath is scheduled to be next. The question is not whether Florida can execute him…the machinery is ready, the drugs are mixed, the witnesses will gather. The question is whether Florida should, whether we will allow another human being to face a system that the state’s own records prove cannot be trusted to kill humanely.
When Justice Becomes Lottery: Is Ronald Heath the worst of the worst?
Ronald Heath’s case exposes the lie at the heart of capital punishment: that it is reserved for the “worst of the worst,” applied with care and consistency. His case reveals the death penalty for what it truly is…arbitrary, infected with systemic bias and utterly divorced from any coherent notion of justice.
Consider: Ronald Heath was sentenced to death on a 10-2 jury vote. Two jurors…two citizens who heard every witness, examined every piece of evidence, deliberated on the weight of a human life…said no. They concluded that execution was not justice. But Florida proceeded anyway, because in this state, 10 votes were enough to kill.
Now consider his co-defendant and brother, Kenneth Heath. Both brothers were charged in connection with Michael Sheridan’s death in Gainesville in May 1989. Both participated in the crime. Kenneth himself has written to the Clemency Board acknowledging they were “equally culpable.” Yet, Kenneth received life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. He is now eligible for release. Ronald will be killed.
How do we explain this? What principle of justice allows the state to conclude one brother can someday walk free while the other must die for the same crime? The answer is simple and damning: there is no principle. There is only the chaotic lottery of who gets which prosecutor, which jury, which judge, which lawyer.
Kenneth’s sentence came as part of a plea agreement in which he agreed to testify against Ronald. So Ronald faces death in part because his brother…equally culpable by his own admission…was willing to trade his testimony for his life. This is the machinery of death in America: one brother lives because he was willing to help condemn the other.
And Ronald’s jury heard nothing of the trauma and abuse he experienced during earlier periods of incarceration, the experiences that shaped him, the context that might have explained without excusing. They made a life or death decision with half the story.
This is not justice. This is procedural violence dressed up in robes.
The Sacred Worth of Every Human Life…Including Ronald Heath
Here we must speak a deeper truth, one that transcends legal arguments and protocol violations, though these alone should be sufficient to halt this execution. We must speak to the moral and spiritual crisis at the heart of what Florida proposes to do.
Every major faith tradition teaches us something essential about human life: that it possesses sacred worth that cannot be extinguished by even the gravest sin. As Pope John Paul II wrote, “The dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.” This is not naivete about the reality of evil. It is a recognition that when the state takes a life, it does not simply end the life of the condemned…it diminishes all of us.
Ronald Heath is not asking to be declared innocent. He has accepted responsibility for his role in Michael Sheridan’s death. He has expressed remorse for the harm caused to Mr. Sheridan and his family. Over 37 years of incarceration, he has pursued education, created art and maintained relationships with family and friends. His aging mother, who lives alone, still visits when she can.
This capacity for growth, for remorse, for maintaining our humanity even in the darkest circumstances…this is what makes us human. To execute Ronald Heath is to declare that this capacity means nothing, that redemption is impossible, that a person’s worth can be reduced to their worst act committed nearly four decades ago.
Michael Sheridan’s death was a profound tragedy that shattered a family and took a life that cannot be restored. Nothing we do to Ronald Heath will bring Michael Sheridan back. The question before us is not whether the crime was terrible…it was. The question is what kind of people we choose to be in response to that terrible crime.
Do we answer violence with more violence? Do we meet suffering with the deliberate infliction of more suffering? Or do we choose something harder and more human…justice tempered with mercy, accountability without vengeance, protection of society without destruction of it?
A Choice Between Two Paths…Is Ronald Heath Worthy of Mercy?
Governor DeSantis stands at a moral crossroads. He can allow this execution to proceed and continue to cement his legacy of presiding over one of the most intensive periods of execution activity in modern American history. Or he can choose the harder path…the path of conscience over convenience, mercy over momentum, humanity over bureaucracy.
A stay of execution is not weakness. It is moral courage. It says: we will not kill when our own records prove we cannot do so constitutionally and humanely. It says: we will not execute a man when his equally culpable brother walks free, when two jurors said no, when the evidence of systemic failure is undeniable.
But more than a stay, this moment demands clemency. Commuting Ronald Heath’s sentence to life without parole would not endanger public safety. It would not free a dangerous person. It would simply acknowledge that the arbitrary differences between Ronald and his brother…the brother who testifies versus the brother who is condemned, the jury that votes 10-2 versus one that might have voted differently, the prosecutor who offers a plea deal versus one who seeks death…cannot justify the ultimate difference between life and death.
The great spiritual teachers understood something essential: that mercy is not the absence of justice, but its highest expression. That we measure a society not by how it treats the powerful and innocent, but by how it treats the powerless and guilty. That vengeance may satisfy a primal urge, but it leaves us spiritually impoverished, while mercy…difficult, costly, uncomfortable mercy…elevates us.
What History Will Remember
In the end, the death penalty fails not just as policy but as theology, as philosophy, as a moral framework for how we treat one another. It fails because it assumes that some human beings are beyond redemption, that some lives have no sacred worth, that we can kill our way to justice. Every major moral tradition…religious and secular alike…tells us this is false.
When we execute despite documented protocol failures, we are not delivering justice…we are performing violence. When we kill one brother while freeing another for the same crime, we are not upholding law…we are exposing its arbitrariness. When we race through executions at a pace that prevents careful review, we demonstrate not strength but moral bankruptcy.
Governor DeSantis, the drugs are mixed, but they do not have to be administered. The death chamber stands ready, but it does not have to be used. The machinery of death has momentum, but mercy is the only real authority.
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