DeSantis withdraws death warrant for first time to halt execution of William Lee Thompson

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has withdrawn a death warrant for the first time in his nearly eight years in office, halting the execution of a 74-year-old death row inmate whose lawyers argue has severe dementia.

The decision, announced in a letter on Thursday afternoon, cancels the scheduled execution of William Lee Thompson. He was set to die by lethal injection on Tuesday at Florida State Prison for a murder committed half a century ago.

DeSantis, who has aggressively expanded and used the death penalty during his tenure, did not provide a reason for his sudden reversal in his letter to Warden Randall Polk. However, the decision follows weeks of mounting pressure from Thompson’s legal team and anti-death-penalty advocates, who warned that the inmate was mentally and physically unfit to be executed.

Why did Ron DeSantis withdraw the death warrant?

While the governor’s office has not released an official explanation, the withdrawal comes after Thompson’s lawyers raised grave concerns about his physical and mental deterioration.

Last month, DeSantis commissioned a three-member panel of psychiatrists to evaluate whether Thompson was legally insane. The order came after a neuropsychologist evaluated Thompson on 15 September and concluded he met the criteria for insanity, lacking the cognitive capacity to understand his impending death or the reasons for it.

According to Grace Hanna, the executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Thompson’s cognitive decline is so advanced that he believed George W. Bush was still the US president.

"He did not know where he was, stated that 'Bush' was the president, and, at times, did not even recognise that he had been sentenced to death," Hanna said.

The psychiatric panel examined Thompson on 1 October, but state officials have not released their findings or explained if the evaluation directly prompted the governor's decision.

Who is William Lee Thompson?

Thompson has spent 48 years on Florida's death row. He was arrested in April 1976 for his role in the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Sally Ivester in a Dade County motel room.

Court records show that Thompson and an accomplice, Rocco Surace, held Ivester and another woman, Barbara Savage, inside the motel room and forced them to call their families for money. When Ivester was only able to obtain $25, she was beaten with a chain-link belt, assaulted with a nightstick and a chair leg, and burned with lighters and cigarettes. She died from internal bleeding and multiple injuries.

Thompson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery, and was sentenced to death in June 1976. This kicked off a decades-long legal battle. His sentence was overturned and reinstated multiple times, culminating in a 1989 resentencing where a jury voted 7–5 to recommend the death penalty, which was upheld on appeal.

Growing scrutiny of US executions

The decision in Florida comes amid heightened international and national focus on the mechanics of capital punishment. Just over a week ago, Tennessee's governor halted all executions in his state following the botched execution of Christa Pike, who survived two lethal injections before being declared brain-dead.

Advocates in Florida had warned that a similar scenario was highly probable for Thompson. In addition to severe dementia, Thompson suffers from heart failure and has severely compromised veins, making the administration of a lethal injection highly risky.

What happens next?

Thompson will remain on Florida's death row, and state officials could theoretically issue a new death warrant in the future. His attorney, Bri Lacy, said the defense team hopes the Florida Department of Corrections will now relocate Thompson to an adequate medical facility to receive the care he needs for his terminal conditions.

Meanwhile, a second execution scheduled for Tuesday in Florida is still set to go ahead. James Robertson, 63, is scheduled to die for the 2008 murder of his cellmate, Frank Hart. Robertson waived all of his legal appeals, previously telling investigators that he committed the murder for the sole purpose of being sent to death row.