RAIFORD, Fla. — The State of Florida executed Ronald Heath this week for the 1989 murder of Michael Sheridan, marking the state’s first execution of 2026.
According to Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, Heath “had a petition for writ of certiorari pending at the U.S. Supreme Court,” but later in the day, “the Court denied Heath’s petition and application for stay. There were no dissents.”
The Guardian outlined the circumstances leading up to Sheridan’s murder. According to court records, “Heath and his brother Kenneth Heath met Sheridan at a Gainesville bar in May 1989. After hanging out at the bar for some time, the three men agreed to go somewhere else to smoke marijuana.”
After this, the brothers decided to rob Sheridan, with Kenneth Heath then “pull[ing] a handgun on Sheridan,” and when “the man initially refused to give the brothers anything, … Kenneth Heath shot Sheradain in the chest.”
The Guardian reports that Sheridan then “emptied his pockets, [and] Ronald Heath began kicking the man and stabbing him with a hunting knife… Kenneth Heath then shot Sheridan twice in the head.”
The Guardian states that following these events, “the brothers dumped Sheridan’s body in a wooded area and returned to the Gainesville bar to take items from his rental car,” subsequently making “multiple purchases with Sheridan’s credit cards the next day.”
Both brothers were arrested, yet Kenneth Heath was “also charged with Sheridan’s murder, but was sentenced to life in prison as part of a plea agreement.”
Prior to his execution, “the Florida supreme court denied appeals filed by Ronald Heath last week,” though, The Guardian reports, “his attorneys had argued that Florida corrections officials had mismanaged the state’s 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.”
Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty cited reporting from John Koch, stating that “Heath woke up at 5:07 a.m. He declined his last meal and has two last visitors — his mother and a friend.”
Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty outlines that “the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) held its standard briefing.” The briefing states that “the sentence of the State of Florida v. Inmate Ronald P. Heath was carried out at 6:12 p.m. EST.”
After his execution, Sheridan’s brother “spoke of the decades of pain his parents suffered waiting for the execution. He then ‘applaud[ed] and thank[ed]’ Gov. DeSantis for supporting victims and making Heath’s execution happen,” as well as “slamm[ing] capital defense teams, calling them ‘conniving,’ for spending years delaying executions and ‘torturing’ victims.”
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty issued a statement following Ronald Heath’s execution, according to Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, stating, “Ronnie was put to death for a murder he did not commit. The undisputed trigger man in that crime, Ronnie’s brother Kenneth, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. That means one day Kenneth may walk free on this earth, while Ronnie will be buried six feet under it.”
The Guardian concludes by explaining that, according to the state’s Department of Corrections, “all Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart.”
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