Each execution diminishes the humanity of everyone involved
En un momento en que el apoyo popular a la pena de muerte alcanza mínimos históricos en Estados Unidos, Florida ha ejecutado a nueve personas en siete meses, convirtiéndose en el epicentro de una aceleración deliberada del castigo capital bajo el gobernador Ron DeSantis. La muerte de Edward Zakrzewski, condenado por el asesinato de su esposa e hijos en 1994, eleva a Florida a responsable de un tercio de todas las ejecuciones del país en 2025. Este ritmo sin precedentes coexiste con una paradoja inquietante: ningún otro estado ha liberado a más inocentes del corredor de la muerte, lo que convierte a Florida en escenario de una tensión profunda entre la urgencia punitiva y la falibilidad humana.
- Florida ha ejecutado a nueve personas en solo siete meses, triplicando su propio récord anual y concentrando un tercio de todas las ejecuciones de Estados Unidos en 2025.
- El gobernador DeSantis ha ampliado activamente las leyes de pena capital para incluir delitos de tráfico humano y crímenes cometidos por migrantes indocumentados, acelerando una política que va a contracorriente de la opinión pública nacional.
- Florida lidera el país con 30 exoneraciones de condenados a muerte desde 1973, una cifra que pone en entredicho la fiabilidad del sistema precisamente cuando este opera a mayor velocidad.
- La Iglesia Católica, organizaciones de derechos civiles y grupos ciudadanos intensifican su oposición, argumentando que la ejecución no sana el dolor de las víctimas ni garantiza la seguridad pública.
- Dos ejecuciones más están programadas para agosto, y el corredor de la muerte de Florida —con 278 reclusos— sugiere que el récord seguirá rompiéndose antes de que termine el año.
El jueves por la tarde, Florida ejecutó a Edward J. Zakrzewski, un exmilitar de sesenta años condenado por asesinar a su esposa y a sus dos hijos pequeños en 1994. Con su muerte, el estado alcanzó nueve ejecuciones en siete meses, un récord histórico que lo convierte en responsable de uno de cada tres ajusticiamientos realizados en todo Estados Unidos durante 2025. El contraste con años recientes es llamativo: en 2024 hubo una sola ejecución en Florida; entre 2020 y 2022, ninguna.
Esta aceleración no es accidental. El gobernador Ron DeSantis y los legisladores republicanos han impulsado una expansión deliberada de la pena capital, incorporando nuevos supuestos como el tráfico sexual y los delitos cometidos por migrantes indocumentados. Florida mantiene a 278 personas en el corredor de la muerte, solo superada por California. Sin embargo, ningún otro estado ha exonerado a más condenados: desde 1973, treinta personas sentenciadas a muerte en Florida han sido liberadas tras demostrarse su inocencia, una cifra que proyecta una sombra sobre la certeza con la que el sistema actúa.
El caso de Zakrzewski tuvo un giro insólito: tras los crímenes, huyó a Hawái y vivió en una comuna religiosa. Cuatro meses después, apareció en un episodio del programa Unsolved Mysteries; al día siguiente, se entregó a las autoridades. Pasó tres décadas en el corredor de la muerte antes de ser ejecutado.
Dos ejecuciones más están previstas para agosto. Frente a este calendario, voces religiosas y civiles elevan su protesta. El arzobispo de Miami publicó un artículo cuestionando la lógica de la retribución: el dolor de las familias de las víctimas, escribió, no se cura con otra muerte. Las encuestas nacionales reflejan un escepticismo creciente —solo el 53% de los estadounidenses apoya la pena capital, uno de los niveles más bajos desde los años setenta— mientras Florida avanza con determinación en sentido contrario.
Florida carried out its ninth execution of 2025 on Thursday evening, a milestone that reshapes the national landscape of capital punishment and underscores the accelerating pace of death sentences under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. Edward J. Zakrzewski, a sixty-year-old former Air Force member, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. local time at Florida State Prison in Raiford, west of Jacksonville, after receiving a lethal injection. He had been convicted of murdering his wife with a machete in June 1994 after she asked for a divorce, and of killing their two children—Anna, five, and Edward, seven—in their home in Okaloosa County. The Florida Department of Corrections confirmed the execution despite objections from civil rights organizations and the Catholic Church.
With Zakrzewski's death, Florida has now accounted for one of every three executions carried out across the entire United States this year. The nation has performed twenty-seven capital sentences in 2025; Florida alone has completed nine in just seven months. This represents a dramatic acceleration compared to recent history. Last year, the state carried out a single execution. In 2023, there were six. From 2020 through 2022, there were none. The shift reflects a deliberate policy direction: DeSantis and Republican lawmakers have passed legislation over the past year that expands the scope of capital punishment, including new provisions that impose death sentences for certain sexual trafficking crimes and for undocumented immigrants convicted of capital offenses.
The state's death row population reflects this trajectory. Florida holds 278 people under sentence of death, second only to California's 585. Yet Florida's distinction carries a darker weight. Since 1973, thirty people sentenced to death in Florida have been exonerated and released—more than any other state. Illinois follows with twenty-two exonerations, Texas with eighteen. The gap between executions carried out and innocent people freed from death row raises questions about the reliability of the system even as it accelerates.
Zakrzewski's case drew national attention in ways that illuminate both the machinery of justice and the role of media in shaping it. After the 1994 murders, he fled to Hawaii and lived in a religious commune. Four months into his fugitive life, he appeared in an episode of the television series Unsolved Mysteries. The broadcast prompted him to surrender the next day. The Florida Supreme Court upheld his three death sentences in 1998. He spent three decades on death row before execution.
Two more executions are scheduled for August. Kayle Bates, sixty-seven, is set to be executed on August 19 for stabbing a twenty-four-year-old woman to death in Bay County. Curtis Windom, fifty-nine, is scheduled for August 28 for killing three people in Orange County. The pipeline of scheduled executions suggests the record will likely be broken again before year's end.
Opposition to the executions has come from organized civil society and religious leadership. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty submitted a petition calling on the governor to end what they described as state-sponsored killing. The group argued that each execution diminishes the humanity of everyone involved, and that true public safety emerges from accountability rooted in justice rather than vengeance. Thomas Wenski, the Archbishop of Miami, published an opinion piece questioning why Florida insists on capital punishment when life imprisonment without parole serves as a severe and just alternative that allows the condemned to reflect on the harm they have caused. He posed a direct challenge to the logic of retribution: the pain of victims' families cannot be healed by another death, he wrote, and the loss of their loved ones cannot be restored through execution.
National polling suggests these voices reflect a broader shift in American sentiment. Support for capital punishment has reached one of its lowest points since the 1970s. Gallup's 2024 survey found that fifty-three percent of Americans support the death penalty—a historic low that contrasts sharply with the trajectory in Florida, where the state is moving decisively in the opposite direction.
Citações Notáveis
A life sentence without possibility of pardon is a severe and just punishment that also allows wrongdoers to continue reflecting on the harm they have caused— Thomas Wenski, Archbishop of Miami
Each execution dehumanizes us all. True public safety comes from justice rooted in accountability, not vengeance— Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why has Florida suddenly accelerated executions so dramatically after years of relative inactivity?
The shift is political. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers have made capital punishment a priority, passing laws that expand which crimes carry death sentences. It's a deliberate policy choice, not an accident of circumstance.
But doesn't Florida's track record with wrongful convictions give anyone pause?
It should. Thirty people have been exonerated from Florida's death row since 1973—more than anywhere else in the country. That's a system executing people and later discovering some were innocent. Yet the response has been to expand the system, not constrain it.
How do people in Florida actually feel about this?
The public is divided, and opposition is organized. Religious leaders, civil rights groups, victims' advocates—they're all speaking out. But they're being outpaced by the machinery of execution itself.
What's the human story beneath the numbers?
Zakrzewski spent thirty years on death row after murdering his family in 1994. He appeared on a television show about unsolved crimes and turned himself in. That's a life contained entirely within the system—arrest, conviction, decades of confinement, then execution. But there are also thirty people who went through that same system and were later found to be innocent.
Does this trend suggest anything about where capital punishment is headed nationally?
Florida is moving against the grain. National support for the death penalty is at historic lows. Most states have moved away from it. Florida is doing the opposite—expanding it, accelerating it, making it a signature policy. It's a regional outlier.