Florida put 77-year-old Vietnam veteran William Reaves to death by lethal injection for murdering a sheriff's deputy nearly four decades ago, the state's 18th execution this year as Gov. Ron DeSantis delivers long-delayed justice for victims' families.
Reaves was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison near Starke after a three-drug lethal injection. The death chamber curtain opened at the scheduled 6 p.m. hour with the condemned man already strapped to a gurney and an IV in his arm.
When asked if he wished to make a final statement, Reaves answered with four words. The drugs followed at once. About 30 seconds later he drew several deep breaths and went still. After a few minutes the team warden shook his shoulders and called his name with no response. A medical professional checked his vitals, and he was declared dead roughly a minute later.
Fox News reported the same timeline and confirmed Reaves offered no last words beyond declining to speak.
The execution closed a case that began on September 23, 1986. Indian River County sheriff's deputy Richard Raczkoski answered a 911 call at a Vero Beach convenience store. Court records and investigators established that Reaves had placed that call from a payphone outside the store.
A gun fell from Reaves' shorts during the encounter. The two men fought over the weapon. Reaves regained control and fired four shots as the deputy tried to flee. Raczkoski died from his wounds later that day.
Reaves was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death about a year after the shooting. The Florida Supreme Court later overturned that conviction over a prosecutorial conflict of interest and ordered a new trial. In 1992 he was convicted again and received a second death sentence. His later appeals failed.
Last week the Florida Supreme Court rejected fresh challenges aimed at stopping the execution, including attacks on the state's three-drug protocol. On Tuesday afternoon the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his eleventh-hour appeal without comment.
Florida Department of Corrections protocol uses a sedative, a paralytic agent, and a drug that stops the heart. The same method has withstood prior legal tests in the state courts.
Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers attended the execution and spoke afterward. He rejected any notion that the procedure delivered full justice.
Sheriff Eric Flowers said:
"Would we all be so lucky to be 77 years old and to die so peacefully. That's not justice in any way in my opinion."
Marc Raczkoski, the deputy's brother, told reporters his brother had finally received the justice he deserved.
Defense attorneys had argued that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs rated Reaves 100 percent disabled from post-traumatic stress disorder tied to his Army service in Vietnam. More than 100 military veterans sent a letter to DeSantis urging him to halt the execution. The governor proceeded anyway.
DeSantis has maintained he is seeking justice for victims' families who have often waited decades. He leaves office in January after two terms marked by an aggressive capital punishment schedule.
Reaves became the 18th inmate executed in Florida this year and the eighth over age 70. Last year the state set a record with 19 executions. It is on pace to match that figure if the next scheduled lethal injection moves forward.
In July, Florida carried out two executions on the same day, the first state to do so in nearly a decade. That dual schedule included a former police officer convicted of raping and drowning an 11-year-old girl, detailed in coverage of the first dual execution day in decades.
Nationwide, 47 people were put to death in 2025, with Florida leading at 19. So far in 2026 the state has accounted for more than half of the 32 U.S. executions, including Reaves.
Jesse Guardado, 64, is next. He is scheduled for lethal injection on November 5 in the same chamber for the 2004 robbery and murder of a 75-year-old woman during a crack cocaine binge.
The push for capital punishment in cases involving officers killed in the line of duty tracks broader calls to apply the ultimate penalty to those who murder cops and first responders, including recent pressure for death sentences in cop-killer cases.
Florida's high volume this year also included the lethal injection of James Robertson, 63, who strangled his cellmate in 2008 specifically to reach death row and then waived his appeals. The New York Post detailed that Robertson was pronounced dead about 10 minutes after the injection and offered no final words. A Department of Corrections spokesman defended the state's sound lethal injection process and protocol.
That case underscored the same three-drug sequence used on Reaves and the steady pace under DeSantis.
Primary accounts of the Reaves execution itself, including the precise 6:12 p.m. pronouncement and the sheriff's remarks, appear in this report on the lethal injection.
Officer deaths and the policy response to them remain a live national issue. One recent review noted how an executive focus on the death penalty coincided with officer fatalities falling to their lowest level since 1943, covered in reporting on the death penalty executive order and officer fatality drop.
Long-unresolved capital cases continue to weigh on investigators and communities years later, a reality familiar from other decades-old murders that still draw attention from those who worked them.
Reaves' final moments stood in stark contrast to the four shots that ended Deputy Raczkoski's life in 1986 and the nearly 40 years his family waited. The courts rejected every remaining claim. The sentence was carried out.
When a killer of a lawman reaches old age on death row, the only remaining question is whether the system still has the will to finish the job. Florida did.
