The Florida Supreme Court issued a ruling on Tuesday that paves the way for the execution of Melvin Trotter, a 65-year-old death row inmate scheduled to die by lethal injection on February 24, 2026.
In a unanimous decision, the justices rejected Trotter’s latest appeals, which challenged the state’s execution protocols and argued that his age should exempt him from the death penalty.
Trotter was convicted of the 1986 murder of 70-year-old Virgie Langford. According to court records, Langford was stabbed multiple times during a robbery at her grocery store in Palmetto.
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While his initial death sentence was overturned for a new penalty phase in the 1990s, a second jury again recommended death, a decision later upheld by the trial court and subsequent appeals. Governor Ron DeSantis signed Trotter’s death warrant on January 23, triggering a flurry of last-minute legal filings.
Trotter’s attorneys raised two primary concerns in their effort to halt the execution. First, they alleged that the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) has a history of “maladministering” lethal injections. These claims included assertions of poor record-keeping, the use of expired drugs, and deviations from published protocols in previous executions.
However, the Supreme Court found these claims to be speculative. Following its own recent precedents, the court noted that Trotter failed to prove the current method presents a “substantial and imminent risk” of “needless suffering.” The justices also pointed out that the defense did not propose an alternative method of execution, which is a legal requirement for such challenges under current law.
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The second part of the appeal focused on Trotter’s age. His legal team argued that executing a 65-year-old constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, suggesting that “evolving standards of decency” should protect the elderly from the death penalty.
The court flatly rejected this argument, stating that both Florida and U.S. Supreme Court precedents only recognize a categorical age-based exemption for those who were under 18 at the time of their crime. The justices emphasized that Florida is bound by a “conformity clause,” meaning the state cannot provide more expansive Eighth Amendment protections than those defined by the U.S. Supreme Court.
With the denial of the stay of execution and the habeas corpus petition, Trotter has exhausted his primary state-level options. Unless the Supreme Court or the Governor intervenes, the execution will proceed as scheduled next week at Florida State Prison.
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