Christian leaders speak out as DeSantis repeatedly breaks Florida’s execution record

Each letter starts the same way: “Dear Governor DeSantis.”

On many issues, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis garners approval from the state’s Catholic leaders, but when it comes to capital punishment, “the governor’s out of step,” said Michael Sheedy, executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Florida has put more people to death than any other state in 2025. By July, DeSantis had broken a state record for capital punishment in a single year with nine executions. The state broke its own record again on Aug. 19 when Kayle Barrington Bates was put to death for killing a woman in 1982. Two more people on death row are scheduled to die in the next month.

So Sheedy’s group, the public policy arm for bishops in the state’s seven dioceses, keeps writing letters.

READ MORE: The U.S. is executing more people this year, and Florida is leading the way

Every time DeSantis issues a death warrant, a new letter is sent with the same message: Please spare the lives on death row and commute their sentences to life without parole.

The letters don’t shy away from the “heinous” crimes committed by those on death row. They frontload acknowledgement of the victims’ families and the pain they’ve endured. They note the state’s responsibility to “impose appropriate punishment” for the crimes. And they mention factors about the soon-to-be-executed — such as childhood trauma and abuse — that the group believes should be considered in each case.

“Every human life, given by God, is sacred,” one of the recent letters read.

Every time the Florida governor issues a death warrant, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops sends a letter, arguing why his administration ought to consider an alternative to capital punishment. Image by Jenna Cohen/PBS News

Florida’s ramp-up in executions is happening at the same time public support for the death penalty is at its lowest level in decades, said Sheedy, whose signature ends each letter.

The state’s Catholic bishops have aligned with the DeSantis administration on various issues, such as its stance against an abortion rights measure. They supported him when he signed a law adding age verification for minors for certain websites, and when he opposed expanding recreational use of marijuana. But their stance on the death penalty diverges from the governor’s.

The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, which works out of Tallahassee, has had some communication with DeSantis staff members, Sheedy said, but not so much with the governor himself.

“We hold out some hope that we will eventually have that conversation,” he said.

The group has urged the governor to stop signing death warrants, inviting him in a July 8 letter to engage in further discussion about the practice.

“We simply propose that there is a better way to achieve the ends of justice,” that letter read.

DeSantis did not respond to requests for comment from PBS News.

How Florida is becoming more of an ‘outlier’ on capital punishment

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a May news conference in Miami. Photo by Carl Juste/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Public support for the death penalty has trended downward since the mid-‘90s, according to Gallup. A poll released in November found that support for the practice in the U.S. hovered at 53%, its lowest level since 1972, when the Supreme Court temporarily banned capital punishment.

Researchers at Gallup have found that the percentages of Democrats and independents who support the death penalty have decreased significantly in eight years, particularly among younger generations. Republican support for the practice has remained fairly steady, with support among younger Republicans declining slightly.

Twenty-seven states, including Florida, allow the death penalty; governors in four of those states have paused executions. Overall, Florida is becoming “more and more an outlier on the death penalty,” said Megan Byrne, a senior staff attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project.

Florida’s death warrant process in particular is opaque, several experts and death penalty opponents told PBS News.

According to an analysis from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) on how different states issue death warrants, Florida stands out for empowering the governor alone — and not a state Supreme Court or state court of criminal appeals — to select people on death row and setting their execution date.

It’s “a single person, one person in the executive, one governor deciding,” Byrne said.

Last year, DeSantis signed one death warrant. So far in 2025, he’s signed 12.

That uptick in signed warrants this year, alongside longstanding concerns over transparency, has led to heightened scrutiny over the process.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature on the death warrant for Kayle Barrington Bates, who received a lethal injection on Aug. 19. Image courtesy of Florida Appellate Case Information System

After DeSantis issued a death warrant in July for Bates, attorneys for the 67-year-old Black man tried through several last-minute appeals to block the execution through the courts. Among the legal challenges was a federal lawsuit against DeSantis, arguing that the death warrant process under the governor is “infected with racial discrimination and arbitrariness.”

The governor, responding to the lawsuit, said it should be dismissed, in part because of “incomplete statistics provided.”

“There is neither a discriminatory effect nor a discriminatory purpose in the Governor’s warrant selection,” the governor’s motion read.

“I support capital punishment because I think there are some crimes that are just so horrific the only appropriate punishment is the death penalty,” DeSantis said at a May news conference. “When you see these things across your desk, these are brutal, brutal crimes.”

One of the witnesses to Bates’ death by lethal ejection was the widower of Janet Renee White, the woman he killed, who said the execution was “a relief” and decadeslong justice for her.

Two more executions are on Florida’s calendar. Curtis Windom is scheduled to be executed at Florida State Prison next week. David Pittman’s execution is set for mid-September.

A broader plea to halt executions, Christian to Christian

Demetrius Minor, a minister at Tampa Life Church, has been warm to the governor’s economic policies and leadership, especially during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But on capital punishment, “I do think he’s been misguided,” he said.

Minor, a member of DeSantis’ Faith and Community Initiative, was among more than 100 Florida Christian leaders who signed a July letter that called on the governor to “pause the signing of death warrants.”

“The death penalty is not a system of redemption. It is a system of retribution, of politics, and of grave error,” said Minor at a July 8 news conference in Tallahassee.

Watch the church leaders’ conference in the player above.

Minor is also the executive director of Conservatives Concerned, a group that questions the “alignment of capital punishment with conservative principles and values.” He engages conservatives in one-on-ones, informal coffee meet-ups, study groups at his church and in more public forums. He likes to talk about being “holistically ‘pro-life.’”

“‘Pro-life’ does not mean that there needs to be agreement with how one lives their life, but the agreement and the fact that they should live their life. And that this is in total alignment with the view that we need to preserve and sanctify human dignity,” he said.

“Capital punishment is becoming very unpopular,” Minor said. “The more people hear about it, the more people are exposed to it, the more they dislike it, and the more they distrust the use of it.”

Minor raised another consideration: Conservatives have an inherent distrust of government, which is heightened during today’s political times, he said.

He said that when he is talking with people who don’t trust the government to deliver their mail on time or truthfully report what’s in the Jeffrey Epstein files, he asks them why, then, they would trust the government with their lives.

Demonstrators hold up signs opposing the death penalty outside Florida State Prison, shortly before Michael Bernard Bell, convicted for carrying out a double murder in 1993, is executed on July 15. Photo courtesy of Fr. Phil Egitto

Fr. Phil Egitto of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church has always been against the death penalty.

The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, overturning its own earlier ruling that had effectively halted the practice nationwide. After that decision, Florida became the first state to put a person to death against their will, carrying out the execution of John Spenkelink in 1979.

Egitto, then a student at the University of Florida, stood in a field outside the prison as Spenkelink died in the electric chair.

When Egitto became a priest, he vowed to go to every execution carried out at Florida State Prison as a form of protest. Since 1995, he has only missed one execution, and his protest has grown.

Egitto now organizes bus trips that allow dozens of people to make the hourslong drive from his church in Daytona Beach to the prison together. At times, people who are unsure how they feel about capital punishment join the ride.

The gatherings also include singing and prayer. Parishioners erect white tents, chairs and umbrellas to help withstand the elements, especially during the hot and muggy summers.

Close to the execution time — set as 6 p.m. by every death warrant this year — parishioners line up to toll a bell. As each person strikes it with a hammer, they say, “Not in my name.”

“When you’re standing across the street, realizing that someone is strapped to a gurney and is about to be injected with poison, … it has a way of affecting your heart,” Egitto said. He worries that Americans are so angry that they are constantly looking for scapegoats. “As a human to human, we tend to have more compassion.”

But with more executions on the calendar, death penalty opponents don’t see Florida’s streak slowing.

“There’s always the hope of the governor softening his stance and changing his mind,” Minor said. “I have doubts on whether that can happen.”

Ahead of Curtis Windom’s execution on Aug. 28, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops released a new letter. It has a familiar rhythm.

The bishops acknowledge Windom’s “terrible” actions, urge that his life be spared and offer prayers for the victims and survivors.

They said they’re praying for the governor “as you consider this request.”