It’s fair to assume that most people on death row spend their final years in a desperate fight to stay alive.
James Robertson desired the opposite. And on Tuesday evening, Florida gave him what he had asked for.
Robertson, 63, became the most recent death row prisoner in the US to see their sentence carried out when he was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison. As per reports, he was pronounced dead around ten minutes after the drugs were delivered.
Robertson’s story ranks as one of the strangest in Florida’s recent history. In 2008, while already serving a prison sentence for burglary and assault, Robertson strangled his cellmate Frank Hart as he slept.
He later told investigators he did it because he desired a death sentence over spending the rest of his life in prison. Robertson spent almost his entire adult life behind bars. He was just 17 when he was locked up in 1980 for burglary and assault, while further convictions, including escape, battery and weapons charges, kept him there for decades.
Robertson would go on to plead guilty to first-degree murder for killing Hart and give up all of his appeals.
Hart, meanwhile, was reportedly only eight days away from being released when he was murdered.
During Robertson’s execution, which came two weeks to the day after the botched attempt to carry out Christa Pike’s sentence in Tennessee, Robertson was asked whether he had any last words. His final reply was: “Nah, I’m straight.”
Prior to Robertson’s execution, a Florida corrections spokesperson told reporters that the state uses a combination of three drugs: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, as opposed to the use of pentobarbital on Pike (Pike survived two doses).
Florida has carried out more executions than any other state in recent years. Robertson was the state’s 17th of 2026, and more than half of all U.S. executions this year have taken place in Florida.
Read more:
