A 53-year-old Florida man who confessed to the 1996 killing of his girlfriend’s 5-month-old daughter is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison near Starke.
Andrew Richard Lukehart was sentenced to death in 1997 for the first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse of Gabrielle Hanshaw. His execution marks the eighth in Florida this year, following 19 executions in 2025.
Court documents show that in February 1996, Lukehart was babysitting Gabrielle in Jacksonville while his girlfriend cared for her other daughter, who was sick. The mother reported that Lukehart drove away from the home and the baby disappeared. Lukehart later called the mother, claiming the infant had been kidnapped and that he was pursuing the abductor. Police eventually found Lukehart in a neighboring county after he crashed his car.
The following day, Lukehart confessed to investigators that Gabrielle died after he dropped and shook her. He told police he panicked and threw her body into a pond, where officers later recovered it.
The Florida Supreme Court denied Lukehart’s appeals last week. Defense attorneys had argued that Lukehart’s kidney medication could interact negatively with the lethal injection drugs, and that the one-month timeline between the signing of his death warrant and the execution date violated due process. The U.S. Supreme Court denied a final appeal on Monday.
The execution continues a sharp increase in the state’s use of capital punishment. Governor Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in 2025 than any other Florida governor in a single year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, breaking the previous record of eight set in 2014. Nationwide, 47 people were executed in 2025, with Florida leading the total. Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas each carried out five executions that year.
Florida utilizes a three-drug lethal injection protocol consisting of a sedative, a paralytic, and a drug designed to stop the heart, according to the Department of Corrections. Another state execution is scheduled later this month for 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer, who was convicted of fatally stabbing his wife in 1992.
READ: Horrific Details Reveal Brutal 1992 Attack Ahead Of Dusty Ray Spencer’s Florida Execution
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