Overview
- Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, is set to receive a three-drug lethal injection beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison after courts rejected his appeals.
- Lukehart confessed to investigators that he dropped and shook 5-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw in February 1996 and later told police he panicked and threw her body in a pond; he was convicted in 1997 of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.
- His lawyers argued that kidney medications could interact with the execution drugs and that the one-month window between the death warrant and the execution violated due process, but the Florida Supreme Court denied relief last week and the U.S. Supreme Court refused his final appeal on Monday.
- Florida uses a three-drug protocol of a sedative, a paralytic and a heart-stopping agent for executions, a method now under heightened scrutiny after troubling executions in other states raised questions about IV access and medical risk.
- This would be Florida's eighth execution of 2026 and follows a record 19 executions in 2025, reflecting a broader state push on capital punishment that is likely to draw more legal and public attention to execution procedures and timelines.