Florida executes Jesse Guardado for 2004 Walton County killing, its 19th execution of 2026

Florida executed Jesse Guardado on Thursday, Nov. 5, for the September 2004 killing of Jackie Malone, 75, in her Walton County home. The Department of Corrections’ execution list, checked Nov. 6, records him as No. 144 since 1976, after 21 years on death row.¹ The News Service of Florida, citing the department, reported that Guardado, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. after a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke.²

His is the 19th entry dated 2026 on the department’s list. The list also has 19 entries dated 2025, and no other year since 1976 has more than eight.¹ The Associated Press reported that Florida accounts for more than half of the 34 executions in the United States so far this year.³

The same day, the U.S. Supreme Court denied two stay applications and the two petitions for review they accompanied. The orders note no dissent.⁴⁵

The News Service reported that Guardado used his final statement to apologize again to the victim’s family “for the pain and suffering I’ve caused.”²

The final appeals

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant Oct. 5, setting the execution for Nov. 5, according to the state’s filing at the U.S. Supreme Court.⁶ Two sets of lawyers pursued separate challenges.

• Clemency: On Oct. 29, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a Walton County judge’s denial of Guardado’s latest postconviction motion and refused a stay.⁷ Lawyers from the state’s Capital Collateral Regional Counsel–North asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 30 to decide whether Florida’s clemency process gives death-sentenced prisoners the due process the 14th Amendment requires.⁴⁸
• Lethal injection: In a federal civil rights suit filed Sept. 28, Guardado argued that if etomidate, the first of the state’s three drugs, was expired, he could pass a consciousness check yet still feel himself suffocating. He cited pharmacy records that he said showed expired etomidate in six 2025 executions.⁶ A federal judge in the Middle District of Florida held an evidentiary hearing Oct. 22 and on Oct. 30 denied a stay, finding that expired etomidate had not been used in those executions, the state’s brief says. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a stay Nov. 2.⁶ His petition quotes a concurring appeals judge as writing that the ruling “should not in any way signal or suggest” that the court condoned what the judge called the department’s failure to meet “its basic responsibility.”⁹

The case as the courts describe it

According to the Florida Supreme Court’s Oct. 29 opinion, Guardado had rented from Malone and stayed in her home, and he decided to rob her after a failed attempt to rob a grocery store. It says he went to her home with a metal bar and a kitchen knife, beat and stabbed her, and took her jewelry box, briefcase, purse and cellphone. He was on conditional release from earlier robbery sentences at the time.⁷

The opinion says Guardado waived counsel and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and robbery with a weapon. A jury unanimously recommended death, and the trial court imposed it.⁷

What comes next

The News Service reported that DeSantis has signed warrants for two more executions this year: Thomas Mitchell Overton on Nov. 19 and Ricardo Gonzalez on Dec. 1. Both would bring the total under DeSantis to 49, it reported.² The department’s list shows 47 executions since he took office in January 2019.¹

What the records do not show

• The governor’s death warrant was not reviewed; its date comes from the state’s court filing.
• The time of death and the final statement come from news reports; the department’s list gives the date but not the time.
• The district court and 11th Circuit rulings in the lethal-injection case were not opened; they are described here from the parties’ filings.
• The U.S. Supreme Court’s orders give no reasons for the denials.