DeSantis Signs First 2026 Death Warrant Following Record-Breaking Year of Executions

After Florida set a modern-era record in 2025 by carrying out 19 executions, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday signed a death warrant for an inmate convicted in the 1989 murder of a man in Alachua County.

Ronald Heath, 64, is scheduled to be executed Feb. 10 at Florida State Prison, according to documents posted Friday evening on the state Supreme Court website.

Heath was sentenced to death in the May 24, 1989, murder of Michael Sheridan, who was shot, stabbed and robbed in a wooded area south of Gainesville, according to the documents. Heath and his brother, Kenneth Heath, met Sheridan at the Purple Porpoise Lounge in Gainesville before the men drove to the wooded area to smoke marijuana.

In a 1991 order sentencing Ronald Heath to death, then-Circuit Judge Robert P. Cates wrote that the Heath brothers tried to rob Sheridan. The order said Ronald Heath instructed his brother to shoot Sheridan, who was initially wounded in the chest.

“Sheriden sat down and began struggling to remove his jewelry and his wallet,” the judge wrote. “Perceiving that Sheriden’s movements were futile and dilatory, Ronald Heath pulled out a hunting knife and stabbed Sheriden in the neck. Ronald attempted to slit Sheriden’s throat but found the task too difficult with a dull knife. He sawed at Sheriden’s neck but was unable to consummate the kill. Thereupon Ronald Heath instructed Kenneth Heath to kill Sheriden with the gun. Kenneth Heath fired two fatal bullets into the brain of Michael Sheriden causing his death.”

(Editor’s note: Cates spelled the victim’s last name as Sheriden. A document filed Friday by Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office and other court documents spelled the name as Sheridan.)

The sentencing order said the Heath brothers used the victim’s credit cards to buy clothes and jewelry at the Oaks Mall in Gainesville, and a police investigation was prompted by a failed effort to use one of the cards to buy a car stereo.

Kenneth Heath, now 60, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence at Tomoka Correctional Institution, according to the Florida Department of Corrections website. Cates wrote in the 1991 sentencing order that Kenneth Heath “acted under the power of Ronald Heath. Ronald Heath, the defendant, is four years older than his brother, Kenneth, and is clearly the dominant brother.”

The signing of a death warrant typically triggers legal battles about whether the execution should be carried out.

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.

–Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida