Tonight, we the people of the State of Florida executed Mark Allen Geralds for the 1989 murder of Tressa Pettibone. We are in the final month of the deadliest year in Florida’s history. Mark was the eighteenth person put to death in 2025, which is more executions than in any single year in Florida, and more killings than any other state in the nation in more than a decade.
Seventeen people were executed before him, not a single one granted a reprieve. Month after month, Mark watched as his neighbors on the row were told they had 30 days or less to live. He watched as they were taken from their cells by a team of guards. He watched as they were led to death watch at Florida State Prison, never to return.
Against that backdrop, when the guards came for him, Mark lost the will to fight. After decades of challenging the validity of his conviction and sentence, uncovering evidence that the State had hidden and withheld from his jury, and without further DNA analysis, Mark waived his remaining appeals and asked to die.
The State of Florida treated Mark’s volunteer status as a gift. His waiver became a shortcut. An opportunity to add another tally to this administration’s death count without confronting the serious constitutional defects in his case. They capitalized on his despair.
Calling Mark a “volunteer” distorts the reality documented in his record. Mark has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Yet at his warrant waiver hearing, his mental state was barely addressed. No updated mental health evaluation was requested or performed. His state postconviction lawyers had spoken with him only briefly that same day, not in person, and had no meaningful opportunity to build any kind of relationship with him, review medical records, build trust, or assess his capacity to make a reasoned decision.
Mark’s case follows the same pattern of systemic breakdown seen in “volunteers,” executed under this administration, including Norman Grim and James Barnes. But Mark’s case has even deeper unresolved questions. Forensic evidence collected from the victim’s home did not match Mark, including blood, fingerprints, and hair, despite clear signs of a struggle in multiple rooms, and evidence of the suspect handling household objects. The victim’s vehicle was moved. A bloody handkerchief found inside the home matched neither the victim’s nor Mark’s blood type. No further DNA analysis has ever been performed to identify the unknown subjects.
Taken together, the suppressed evidence, the untested forensics, the mental-health history minimized at the waiver hearing, the absence of a meaningful end-stage state court attorney review, and the unprecedented pace of executions create a picture of a system that is grinding people down rather than seeking the truth. What is clear is that Mark’s jury never saw the whole picture and that the courts have never grappled with it.
When a state takes someone’s life, there should be zero doubt, particularly in a state that has 30 death row exonerations, the highest in the nation. No one can say there is zero doubt here.
This administration has executed people abandoned by or left without state court counsel. It has moved ahead despite outdated clemency reviews, non-unanimous juries, and suppressed evidence. This administration has also shaped the courts that consistently refuse to engage in meaningful review of significant legal claims.
Tressa Pettibone’s life mattered. We grieve for Tressa and those who loved her. We grieve for Mark and the people who loved him. We grieve for a state that carries out executions that are insulated from scrutiny.
Florida’s current leadership has turned the death penalty into a prop, brandished for headlines and weaponized for political gain.
Mark’s execution tonight is confirmation that this unrelenting pace of executions and the superficial final review by the courts has now broken the will of even those death row prisoners who fought to prove their innocence. That should terrify every Floridian.
###
FADP is a Florida-based, statewide organization of individuals and groups working together to end the death penalty in Florida. Our network includes dozens of state and local groups and thousands of individual Floridians, including murder victims’ family members and other survivors of violent crime, law enforcement professionals, families of the incarcerated, and death row exonerees.