Indiana executes man as Florida and Alabama prepare to follow suit
Three states will put inmates to death on Thursday, with Indiana’s procedure already complete and two more scheduled to occur later in the day.
By Rafael Bailey ·
Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, was pronounced dead at 12:45 a.m. Thursday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. The Indiana Department of Correction confirmed that Weisheit received a lethal injection for a 2010 house fire that killed his girlfriend’s two children, ages eight and five. His death marks the first of three executions planned for the same day across the United States.
Florida and Alabama are scheduled to carry out their own executions later Thursday. These procedures would make it the second time this year that three inmates are put to death on a single day. The previous instance occurred on August 13, when Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Alabama executed three prisoners within hours of each other.
In Florida, 64-year-old Jesse Guardado is set to be executed for fatally stabbing 75-year-old Jackie Malone in 2004. Guardado pleaded guilty and confessed to the crime, which he committed after Malone helped him find housing and a job. He stole her jewelry box, $80, and other items to fund a drug addiction. This will be Florida’s 19th execution of 2026, matching the record set last year under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Grace Hanna, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, urged the state to halt the execution. She noted that Guardado has expressed deep remorse and that the state should accept responsibility for its treatment of him as a child. Florida has accounted for more than half of the 32 executions carried out nationwide before Thursday.
In Alabama, 54-year-old Michael Taylor is scheduled to be executed for the 1991 murders of an older couple. Taylor was caught in Birmingham with the victims’ Cadillac after beating them to death with a metal bar during a robbery. Officials will use lethal injection, a method Taylor’s attorneys opposed after a judge ruled against their objections. Taylor had previously requested execution by nitrogen gas.
Republican Gov. Kay Ivey rejected clemency requests from opponents who argued Taylor was too young and immature at 19 to fully appreciate the consequences of his actions. Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty told the Associated Press that the state is killing the mature man sitting in the cell today, not the 19-year-old who made the mistake. Indiana’s execution also follows a denial of requests for additional brain scans and a commutation by Gov. Mike Braun.
Braun stated that Weisheit’s case underwent repeated reviews in state and federal courts that never resulted in an overturned sentence. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said the execution delivered long-awaited justice for the two children killed in the fire. The executions come after a failed lethal injection attempt in Tennessee in September, where inmate Christa Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital and was rushed to a hospital.
