Florida is on track to carry out its 13th execution this year with the scheduled killing of Victor Jones on September 30, 2025. This relentless pace makes Florida one of the deadliest states in the nation for executions, even as serious doubts persist about the fairness, constitutionality, and reliability of its death penalty system.

Mr. Jones’ case highlights the systemic failures that plague capital punishment in Florida:

• Unresolved Questions of Fairness: Over decades of litigation, Mr. Jones has raised claims about ineffective assistance of counsel, intellectual disability, and failures to consider key mitigating evidence like brain damage and fetal alcohol syndrome. These claims were never fully considered by the courts.

• Broken Jury System: One of Jones' sentences was non-unanimous (10–2). Florida remains an outlier in its willingness to execute people after divided jury recommendations, despite U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Hurst v. Florida exposing flaws in the state’s sentencing scheme.

• A National Outlier: While most states have moved away from the death penalty, Florida is accelerating executions at an alarming rate. Each warrant signed underscores the state’s embrace of a punishment that is arbitrary, racially biased, and out of step with evolving standards of decency.

The death penalty does not bring safety, closure, or healing. It perpetuates cycles of violence, consumes public resources that could go to true community safety, and risks executing people without ever resolving lingering questions about their cases.

Stopping Victor Jones’ execution is not just about one man. It is about rejecting Florida’s reckless expansion of state killing and standing for a justice system that values fairness, human dignity, and life.