Murderer who killed touring salesman in brutal theft to be Florida’s first execution of 2026 | EUROtoday

A person who murdered a touring salesman throughout a theft is about to be the primary individual to be executed in Florida this yr.

Ronald Palmer Heath, 64, is scheduled to obtain a three-drug injection beginning at 6pm at Florida State Prison close to Starke. Heath was convicted in 1990 of first-degree homicide, theft with a lethal weapon and different expenses within the killing of Michael Sheridan the earlier yr.

The state’s first scheduled execution of 2026 follows a report 19 executions in Florida final yr.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis oversaw extra executions in a single yr in 2025 than some other Florida governor for the reason that dying penalty was reinstated within the U.S. in 1976. The earlier report was eight executions in 2014.

According to courtroom information, Heath and his brother Kenneth Heath met Sheridan at a Gainesville bar in May 1989. After hanging out on the bar for a while, the three males agreed to go someplace else to smoke marijuana.

At some level, the brothers plotted to rob the opposite man, investigators stated. Ronald Heath drove the group to a distant space, the place Kenneth Heath pulled a handgun on Sheridan.

The man initially refused to offer the brothers something, and Kenneth Heath shot Sheridan within the chest.

As Sheridan emptied his pockets, Ronald Heath started kicking the person and stabbing him with a searching knife, prosecutors stated. Kenneth Heath then shot Sheridan twice within the head.

The brothers dumped Sheridan’s physique in a wooded space and returned to the Gainesville bar to take gadgets from his rental automobile, in accordance with the courtroom report. It stated the brothers made a number of purchases with Sheridan’s bank cards the subsequent day at a Gainesville mall.

Ronald Heath was arrested a number of weeks later at his residence in Douglas, Georgia, after investigators linked him to the stolen bank cards. Officers recovered clothes bought with the stolen playing cards, in addition to Sheridan’s watch, in accordance with courtroom information.

Kenneth Heath was additionally charged with Sheridan’s homicide, however was sentenced to life in jail as a part of a plea settlement.

The Florida Supreme Court denied appeals filed by Ronald Heath final week. His attorneys had argued that Florida corrections officers had mismanaged its personal dying penalty protocols, that the state’s secretive clemency course of blocked due course of, that Heath’s incarceration as a juvenile stunted his mind growth and that jurors didn’t suggest the dying penalty unanimously.

Heath nonetheless has comparable appeals pending earlier than the U.S. Supreme Court.

A complete of 47 folks had been executed within the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way in which with a flurry of dying warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with 5 executions every that yr.

Two extra Florida executions have already been scheduled for later this month and subsequent month. Melvin Trotter, 65, is scheduled to die on Feb. 24, and the execution of Billy Leon Kearse, 53, is about to comply with precisely every week afterward March 3.

All Florida executions are carried out through deadly injection utilizing a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the guts, in accordance with the Department of Corrections.