Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a death warrant for Willie Seth Crain Jr., an 80-year-old man on death row for the 1998 disappearance and murder of a 7-year-old Hillsborough County girl, setting his execution for 6 p.m. on Thursday, December 10, at Florida State Prison in Raiford.

Source: Tampa Bay 28 / ABC Action News

The warrant was signed on Tuesday, November 10. Shortly afterwards, the Florida Supreme Court issued a scheduling order that puts every remaining step of the case on an expedited timetable running to December 1 — just nine days before the execution date.

Source: Tracking Florida's Death Penalty

The court's timetable: everything finishes by December 1

Under the Florida Supreme Court's scheduling order, all pending proceedings in the trial (circuit) court must be completed by Wednesday, November 25, at 11:00 a.m. Any notice of appeal and any writ petition is due the same day, November 25, at 1:00 p.m. The initial brief is due Sunday, November 29, at 2:00 p.m., the answer brief on Monday, November 30, at 5:00 p.m., and the reply brief on Tuesday, December 1, at 2:00 p.m. Oral arguments, if the court decides they are necessary, will be scheduled at a later date.

Source: Florida Supreme Court scheduling order, via TFDP

That compressed calendar is standard once a Florida governor signs a death warrant: it forces any last challenges — over the conviction, the sentence, Crain's competence or the execution process itself — to be filed and decided in weeks rather than months, with the state supreme court as the final state-level stop before federal courts and the clemency process.

The 1998 case, and a body that was never found

The girl disappeared from her home in Hillsborough County in September 1998. Her body was never found, despite an extensive two-week search of Upper Tampa Bay and the surrounding land described in the court record. Prosecutors argued at trial that Crain, then a 52-year-old fisherman and crabber, killed her and disposed of her remains in Tampa Bay, and they presented DNA and witness evidence linking him to the crime. Crain denied involvement and has maintained his innocence ever since.

Source: Florida Supreme Court opinion record, via TFDP; AmeriLedger

A jury found Crain guilty of first-degree murder on September 13, 1999, and, after the penalty phase, unanimously recommended the death sentence. The trial judge imposed it on November 19, 1999, finding three aggravating factors, each given great weight: prior violent felonies, a murder committed during the course of a kidnapping, and a victim under the age of twelve. He was also convicted of kidnapping at the same trial.

Source: Florida Supreme Court opinion record, via TFDP

Twenty-seven years of appeals

The Florida Supreme Court affirmed Crain's convictions and death sentence on direct appeal in 2004, and the judgment became final in 2005. His postconviction challenges were denied by the circuit court and unanimously affirmed by the state supreme court in October 2011. A federal district court denied his claims in September 2022, and an earlier challenge based on the Hurst decision — which changed how Florida juries must be used in death sentencing — was also rejected, in part because his jury's recommendation for death had been unanimous.

Source: TFDP case history

The warrant arrives in the final weeks of DeSantis's term and in the middle of the fastest execution pace in Florida's modern history. The Tracking Florida's Death Penalty project counts this as the 23rd death warrant the governor has issued this year. If the December 10 execution is carried out, it is slated to be Florida's 22nd execution of 2026. Two other executions — of Thomas Mitchell Overton and Richardo Gonzalez — are scheduled before Crain's date, and death-penalty opponents have called for a temporary suspension of executions so the state's procedures can be reviewed, while a group of people exonerated after sitting on Florida's death row has asked the incoming governor to slow the pace.

Source: WFLA via iHeart; TFDP

For Hillsborough County, the warrant reopens a case that has never fully closed: a child who vanished in 1998, a two-week search that found nothing, and a conviction built without a body. Whatever the courts decide in the next three weeks, December 10 is now the date around which the victim's family, Crain's lawyers and the state must all work.

Source: Tampa Bay 28 / ABC Action News