Florida Set for 13th Execution This Year

Florida is set to carry out its 13th execution of 2026 on Tuesday, when William Frances Silvia, 61, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke.

That is more than half of all 22 executions carried out in the United States so far this year, according to The Associated Press and The Independent.

Silvia was condemned for a 2006 shotgun attack that killed his estranged wife, Patricia Silvia, and wounded her mother, Betty Woodard.

The Numbers

Thirteen executions in one state in eight months is a pace no other state is close to. Florida's own record year came in 2025, when it put 19 prisoners to death — the most since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Nationally, 47 people were executed in 2025.

In July, Florida executed two prisoners in a single day, the first state to do so in nearly a decade.

Two more executions are already on the calendar. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is scheduled to die Sept. 1; Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, on Sept. 10. Lucas was convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl who rejected his advances and wounding two of her friends. Conahan was convicted of kidnapping and strangling a man he had paid to pose for nude photos, and authorities suspect him in similar killings in southwest Florida in the 1990s.

The run comes in the final term of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Case

According to court records, Silvia bought a shotgun in 2006 and drove to Woodard's home in the Orlando area, where his wife had been living since the couple separated two months earlier.

The family was in the middle of a cookout when he arrived. After an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile, authorities said, Silvia retrieved the shotgun from his truck and shot both women. Patricia Silvia was killed; Woodard was wounded.

He was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.

The Appeals

Silvia's attorneys argued that the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, the state agency that represents death row inmates, could not give him adequate legal help because it was already representing another condemned prisoner. The Florida Supreme Court rejected that appeal.

A final appeal was still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court as of Tuesday morning.