Florida carries out lethal injection of 77-year-old Vietnam vet for 1986 police murder

At 6:12 p.m. local time, William Reaves, a 77-year-old Vietnam War veteran, was executed by a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been convicted of shooting Deputy Richard Raczkowski in the back four times during a 1986 incident at a Vero Beach convenience store. Reaves declined to offer any final statement.

The execution is the 18th carried out this year under Governor Ron DeSantis, whose aggressive death-penalty policy has drawn national attention following the failed lethal injection of Christa Pike in Tennessee. Reaves' defense claimed jurors were not informed of his 100% PTSD disability rating, and more than 100 veterans petitioned the governor to stop the execution; the Florida Supreme Court rejected his last appeal without comment.

After an initial conviction was overturned due to a prosecutorial conflict of interest, he was reconvicted and sentenced to death again in 1992, and subsequent challenges to Florida’s three-drug protocol have been denied. Reaves becomes the eighth inmate over 70 executed in Florida this year, underscoring the state’s aging death-row population and its record-setting execution rate.