Miami (AFP) – A 64-year-old man convicted of murdering a traveling salesman is to be put to death by lethal injection on Tuesday in Florida, the US state that carried out more executions last year than any other. Ronald Heath, who served 10 years in prison for another murder committed when he was 16 years old, is to be executed at 6:00 pm (2300 GMT) at the state prison in Raiford.
Heath was sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of Michael Sheridan during a robbery committed with his younger brother, Kenneth Heath. Kenneth Heath pleaded guilty to murder and testified against his brother. He was sentenced to life in prison. The jury found that “Ronald Heath was the dominant actor in the murder and robbery, and that he maintained substantial influence over his younger, weaker brother, Kenneth,” according to court documents.
Sheridan’s killing came just months after Ronald Heath had been released from prison after serving 10 years of a 30-year prison sentence for the murder committed when he was a teenager. The execution will be the second in the United States this year. A man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend was put to death by lethal injection in Texas last month.
There were 47 executions in the United States last year, the most since 2009, when 52 inmates were put to death. Florida carried out the most executions in 2025 — 19 — followed by Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas, where there were five each. Thirty-nine of last year’s executions were carried out by lethal injection. Three were by firing squad and five by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate. The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place. President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and has called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”
© 2024 AFP
