Resuming a rapid pace of executions, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday signed a death warrant for a man convicted in the 1986 murder of a Manatee County grocery-store owner.
Melvin Trotter, 65, is scheduled to be executed Feb. 24 and could be the second inmate put to death by lethal injection next month. The state in 2025 set a modern-era record of 19 executions, including putting to death two inmates each month from May through December.
DeSantis on Jan. 9 signed a death warrant for Ronald Heath to be executed Feb. 10 in the 1989 murder of a man in Alachua County.
Trotter was sentenced to death in the June 1986 murder of Virgie Langford, 70, who was found by a truck driver on the floor at the back of Langford’s Grocery Store in Palmetto, according to court documents.
“She had suffered a large abdominal wound which resulted in disembowelment; there were a total of seven stab wounds,” a 1990 Florida Supreme Court opinion that upheld Trotter’s conviction said. “She told the driver that she had been stabbed and robbed. Several hours after the surgery for her wounds, the victim went into cardiac arrest and died.”
Before 2025, Florida’s previous modern-era record for executions in a year was eight in 1984 and 2014. The modern era represents the time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision halted it.
The signing of a death warrant typically leads to the inmate’s attorneys filing legal challenges to try to stop the execution. The group Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty quickly called for halting Trotter’s scheduled execution.
“Rather than pausing after the deadliest execution year in state history, Florida has begun the new year exactly where it left off,” the group said on its website. “This is not about excusing violence. It is about whether Florida will continue treating executions as routine, despite the risk of irreversible error and the deep harm this system causes to victims’ families, corrections staff, courts and communities.”
Meanwhile Friday, an attorney for Heath appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, two days after Alachua County Circuit Judge James Colaw rejected a request to vacate his death sentence.
Heath, 64, was sentenced to death in the May 1989, murder of Michael Sheridan, who was shot, stabbed and robbed in a wooded area south of Gainesville, according to court documents. While Heath was sentenced to death, his brother, Kenneth Heath, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the case and is serving a life sentence.
