Richard Randolph, a man who was convicted of sexually assaulting and killing his manager at a convenience store in 1988, was executed in Florida on Thursday night. It was the 17th death sentence that’s been carried out in Florida so far in 2025, the highest total for the state in modern history and more than double the number in any other year over the past half-century.

The dramatic increase in the state has driven the national total of executions to its highest level since 2010 and has been a major factor in the reversal of a trend that had seen capital punishment becoming less and less common in recent decades.

During the 2000s, there were an average of 59 total executions per year in the U.S. Before this year, the average for the 2020s was just 19, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center. Randolph’s was the 44th execution nationwide in 2025. Three more are scheduled to take place before the end of the year, two of them in Florida. Florida executed only one person last year and had zero executions in three out of the past six years.

The big shift in Florida wasn’t caused by a change in the state’s leadership. Republican Ron DeSantis, a longtime supporter of the death penalty, has been governor there for the past six years. What has changed, of course, is who’s in charge at the national level.

President Trump, like most Republicans, is a strong proponent of capital punishment. His vocal public advocacy on the issue dates back to 1989, when he took out full-page ads in New York City newspapers urging the state to “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY.”

On his first day back in the White House in January, Trump signed an executive order that ended a moratorium on federal executions put in place by the Biden administration and ordered his attorney general to ensure that states have a “sufficient supply of drugs” to perform lethal injections.

“Capital punishment is an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens. Our Founders knew well that only capital punishment can bring justice and restore order in response to such evil,” the order read.

DeSantis has shared a similar point of view when asked about his state’s recent uptick in executions.

“There’s victims’ families that are wanting to see justice … I'm doing my part to deliver that,” he said earlier this month during an appearance in Jacksonville.

Two years ago, DeSantis signed a law that allows capital sentences to be issued if eight or 12 jurors agree, ending a requirement used by most other states that a jury must be unanimous. More recently, he has advocated for executing certain child sexual predators, despite existing Supreme Court precedent stating that the death penalty can be used only for fatal crimes.

The death penalty is legal in 27 states, but executions are relatively rare in many of them. In the nearly 50 years since the Supreme Court lifted a nationwide ban on capital punishment, Florida has carried out 123 executions, according to the DPIC. Texas has completed 596 executions over that same time span.

In 2025, however, there have been more than three times as many executions in Florida as there have been in Texas.

A slim majority of Americans still support the death penalty, but views on capital punishment have shifted dramatically over the past three decades. In 1994, 80% of poll respondents said they favored the death penalty. Today, 52% say the same, according to Gallup. That decline has been driven entirely by changing attitudes among Democrats and independents. Support for the death penalty has remained high among Republicans over the past 25 years.

A strong body of scientific research has consistently shown that capital punishment does not serve as an effective deterrent to crime. There are also hundreds of examples of people who have been put on death row, only to later be exonerated — including 30 such cases in Florida.