November 4, 2026 | For Immediate Release
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) is urging Gov. Ron DeSantis to stop the execution of Jesse Guardado, scheduled for Thursday, November 5, 2026, at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Raiford, FL. Guardado is scheduled to be the 19th person executed in Florida in 2026, matching the record set last year for the most executions in a single year in recorded state history. He would also be at least the 11th survivor of Florida’s infamous Dozier School for Boys executed.
In 2004, Jesse Guardado contacted police in Walton County and confessed to the murder of of Jackie Malone. Ms. Malone had sought to help Guardado as he struggled with a severe substance use disorder. Overcome with guilt, he waived his right to an attorney and pleaded guilty just 25 days after his arrest, hoping to spare the Malone family the pain of a trial. Since then, he has consistently expressed deep remorse and accepted responsibility for her death.
Guardado’s attorneys have filed a petition with the United State Supreme Court arguing that Florida’s clemency process violates his right to due process. Separately, he is challenging Florida’s lethal injection protocol. No person sentenced to death in Florida has received clemency since 1983, and Gov. DeSantis has stated that he will not grant clemency to people convicted of murder or felony sex offenses. For someone facing execution for murder, this policy ensures that there is no room for individual consideration of remorse, rehabilitation, childhood abuse, or other reasons to spare a life.
Guardado alleges that he learned his clemency proceedings had ended only when the governor signed his death warrant on October 5. On October 29, the Florida Supreme Court rejected his challenge, finding that he had received clemency review and declining to second-guess the executive branch’s decision.
Clemency is meant to be a fail-safe that allows the governor and Cabinet to consider the full circumstances of a person’s life, including matters that courts cannot address. In Guardado’s case, those circumstances include the abuse he endured as a child in Florida’s custody and the ways that trauma may have contributed to the crime that sent him to death row. Elizabeth Vartkessian, executive director of Advancing Real Change, Inc., a nonprofit that investigates the life histories of people facing serious criminal charges, said “When a state goes more than four decades without granting clemency to anyone facing execution, we have to ask whether there is any life story it is willing to consider. The purpose of clemency is to allow a person’s full history, including their experiences of abuse, their remorse, and how they have changed, to inform the decision about whether they should live. In Florida, it appears that decision is being made before those stories are even heard.”
At the Dozier School for Boys, Guardado reported being beaten while handcuffed and shackled and witnessing other children being raped and beaten. His experience was part of a pattern of abuse that Florida allowed to continue for generations. A 2025 investigation by The Marshall Project identified at least 50 men who attended Dozier or the Okeechobee School for Boys and were later sentenced to death in Florida. Dozier was shut down by the United States Department of Justice in 2011 after an investigation into the violent, suspicious, and unexplained deaths of at least 98 boys during the school’s years of operation.
The Florida Legislature formally apologized to survivors in 2017. In 2024, Gov. DeSantis signed legislation providing compensation to some survivors of both schools. Florida is now preparing to execute two Dozier survivors just two weeks apart: Guardado on November 5 and Thomas Overton on November 19.
“Jesse Guardado has accepted responsibility for killing Jackie Malone and has consistently expressed deep remorse. Florida should accept responsibility for what it did to him as a child, too,” said Grace Hanna, executive director of FADP. “The governor signed legislation recognizing the abuse survivors endured at Dozier and the lasting harm it caused. That history deserves consideration when those same survivors ask for mercy, but Florida’s illusion of a clemency process ensures that there is no meaningful opportunity for review.”
FADP urges Gov. DeSantis and the Florida Board of Executive Clemency to stop Guardado’s execution and commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. If the execution is carried out, the organization and partners will gather in vigil and protest across the state.
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Legal Sources:
Circuit Court (Walton County): 662004CF000903CFAXMX
Florida Supreme Court: SC2026-1065
U.S. Supreme Court: 26-6013