A man convicted of killing a traveling salesman during a robbery is set to be executed Tuesday evening in the first lethal injection this year in Florida. Ronald Palmer Heath, 64, is scheduled to receive a three-drug injection starting at 6pm at Florida State Prison, reports the AP. Heath was convicted in 1990 of first-degree murder, robbery with a deadly weapon, and other charges in the killing of Michael Sheridan the previous year. The state's first scheduled execution of 2026 follows a record 19 executions in Florida last year. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1976. The previous record was eight executions in 2014.
The Florida Supreme Court denied appeals filed by Ronald Heath last week. His attorneys had argued that Florida corrections officials had mismanaged its own death penalty protocols, that the state's secretive clemency process blocked due process, that Heath's incarceration as a juvenile stunted his brain development and that jurors did not recommend the death penalty unanimously. On Tuesday morning, the US Supreme Court denied Heath's appeal.
A total of 47 people were executed in the US in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas tied for second with five executions each that year. Two more Florida executions have already been scheduled for later this month and next month. Melvin Trotter, 65, is scheduled to die on Feb. 24, and the execution of Billy Leon Kearse, 53, is set to follow a week later on March 3. All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic, and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
According to court records, Heath and his brother Kenneth Heath met Sheridan at a Gainesville bar in May 1989. At some point, the brothers plotted to rob the other man, investigators said. Ronald Heath drove the group to a remote area, where Kenneth Heath pulled a handgun on Sheridan. The man initially refused to give the brothers anything, and Kenneth Heath shot Sheridan in the chest. Ronald Heath began kicking the man and stabbing him with a hunting knife, prosecutors said. Kenneth Heath then shot Sheridan twice in the head. Kenneth Heath was also charged with Sheridan's murder, but was sentenced to life in prison as part of a plea agreement.
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