James Robertson, 63 years old, was executed this Tuesday by lethal injection at Florida State Prison, near Starke, nearly 18 years after deliberately strangling his cellmate with the sole intent of receiving a death sentence.
According to a report by Associated Press, Robertson was declared dead at 12:32 PM, becoming the seventeenth execution in the state so far in 2026.
A calculated crime to escape isolation
In December 2008, Robertson tied several socks to make a noose and strangled Frank Hart while he was sleeping at the Charlotte Correctional Institution, north of Fort Myers.
He confessed to investigators that the attack was premeditated and unprovoked: he wanted to be transferred to death row to escape the harsh conditions of regular prison isolation.
Robertson had entered the Florida prison system in 1980, at the age of 17, for burglary and assault, and spent 20 years in intensive isolation.
In 2018, he explained his reasoning in the Netflix documentary I Am a Killer.
"They lock you in a cell all day. You might be able to go out a couple of times a week for about two hours, and they put you in a small cage. You lose all motivation."
Hart was 52 years old and just eight days away from a possible release when he was killed.
His daughter, Rebecca Hart, traveled from West Virginia to witness the execution.
“Nearly two decades have passed. I honestly believe that after this, closure will come,” he stated, according to Gulf Coast News.
Robertson resigned from all his appeals
After pleading guilty to first-degree murder, Robertson waived the sentencing phase before a jury and was sentenced to death by a judge in December 2012.
The Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 2016.
At the beginning of October, he reiterated before a judge that he did not wish to file final appeals with any court.
The governor Ron DeSantis had signed the execution order on October 1, the day after the failed execution attempt of Christa Pike in Tennessee.
Florida was set to execute two inmates that same Tuesday, but DeSantis inexplicably withdrew the execution order for 74-year-old William Lee Thompson, marking the governor's first cancellation of a death penalty.
Thompson's defense claimed dementia, heart failure, and severe malnutrition. The inmate remains on death row.
Florida, the most active execution chamber in the country
The state of Florida accounts for more than half of the 31 executions carried out across the country so far this year, exceeding the total of the other five states that implemented them combined, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
In 2025, Florida executed 19 people, the highest annual number since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
In July, the state executed two inmates on the same day, something that no state had done in almost a decade.
National debate on the death penalty
The execution of James Robertson took place amidst unprecedented scrutiny over the death penalty in the country.
On September 30, Christa Pike survived an execution attempt in Tennessee after receiving two doses of pentobarbital, in what the DPIC described as the first known case of survival following the administration of lethal drugs in the modern era.
This Tuesday, dozens of Latino evangelical leaders convened in Tallahassee, organized by Mission Talk, to deliver a letter signed by more than 70 bishops, pastors, and leaders of Latino churches to DeSantis, requesting a halt to the executions.
His founder, Agustín Quiles, accused the governor of turning Florida into "the capital of executions in the United States, while the rest of the country moves away from the death penalty."
Maria DeLiberato, legal director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, pointed out that the case undermines the deterrent argument for the death penalty.
"The existence of the death penalty may have caused the same violence that it supposedly prevents," he stated according to CBS News.
Florida has two executions scheduled for the remainder of the year: William Reaves, 77 years old, on October 20, and Jesse Guardado, 64, on November 5.
If both are achieved, the state will match its own historical record with eight weeks still remaining in the year.
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