STARKE, Florida — Florida executed Jesse Guardado on Thursday evening, November 5, carrying out the state's 19th execution of 2026 and tying the modern-era record Florida set just last year. Guardado, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. after a lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke, in Bradford County. This report follows the site's earlier coverage of the Florida Supreme Court clearing the way for the execution; Thursday's lethal injection is the outcome that litigation was about.
Source: Associated Press (via Alabama's 42)
Guardado had pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing 75-year-old Jackie Malone inside her Walton County home in 2004, before stealing her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs. The Associated Press reported that Malone had helped Guardado get a job and housing. He confessed to the killing, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and armed robbery, and was sentenced to death in October 2005.
Source: Fortune Chronicle (execution report)
An apology as his final words
Guardado was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the death-chamber curtain rose promptly at 6:00 p.m., the AP reported. Asked whether he had a last statement, he replied: “I would like to once again apologize for the pain and suffering I've caused to the victim's family and my own family as well.” The drugs began flowing immediately afterward; about a minute later he began breathing heavily, followed by sputtering and twitching, and after a warden shook him and called his name without response, a medic pronounced him dead at 6:13 p.m.
The victim's son, Patrick Malone, spoke briefly to reporters after the execution. Without directly discussing his mother or her murder, he questioned opponents of the death penalty: “Do such people ever think about what happened to the victim or consider the unending aftermath the victim's family endures and relives every time that terrible event comes up?”
Governor Ron DeSantis signed Guardado's death warrant on October 5, stating that executive clemency had been considered and was not appropriate. The Florida Supreme Court rejected Guardado's final claims on October 29, and on Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final application for a stay without a recorded dissent, according to reports of the final litigation. Florida has not granted clemency to a condemned person since 1983.
Three executions in one day — and California going the other way
Guardado's execution was one of three carried out in the United States on the same day — only the second triple-execution day this year, and before this year the last such day was in 2010, the AP reported. In Indiana, Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, was pronounced dead at 12:45 a.m. at the state prison in Michigan City for setting a 2010 house fire near Evansville that killed his girlfriend's two children, Alyssa Lynch and Caleb Lynch; Governor Mike Braun declined clemency. In Alabama, Michael Taylor, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. local time for beating an elderly couple, Ivan and Lucille Moore, to death during a 1991 robbery in their Gadsden home; Governor Kay Ivey declined to reduce his sentence.
The same day, in sharp contrast, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced he will commute all 548 death sentences in his state to life without parole, saying state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values. Florida, under outgoing Governor DeSantis, has now carried out more than half of the 35 executions conducted in the United States so far this year, following a state record of 19 executions in 2025 — the record Thursday's execution tied. DeSantis, who leaves office in January, has said he wants to bring justice to victims' families who have often waited decades for death sentences to be carried out.
Nearly half of U.S. states have banned the death penalty outright, and a handful of others carry out most of the nation's executions. Renewed scrutiny followed Tennessee's failed execution of Christa Pike in September. In Florida, Guardado was reported to be at least the 11th person who survived the state's Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys to be executed, and the 46th person executed under Governor DeSantis.
What happens next: the state is planning two more executions later this year, which would take Florida past its own record. No further court action remains in Guardado's case — his appeals and stay applications ended with Thursday's rulings — and attention now turns to the warrants DeSantis signs in his final weeks in office and to whether his successor keeps the same pace in 2027.