STARKE, Fla. — Tonight, We, the People of the State of Florida, executed Melvin Trotter, an intellectually disabled Black man, for the 1986 murder of Virgie Langford. His execution proceeded despite ignored evidence of intellectual disability, clear racial disparities in his sentencing, and troubling, repeated deviations from Florida’s own lethal injection protocol.
As we always do, we hold the grief of Virgie Langford’s family and their irrevocable loss alongside the grief of those who loved and lost Melvin. We also grieve for Melvin, the little boy who entered this world as the product of rape, grew up fatherless, and endured emotional deprivation and physical abuse from his birth mother, who herself understandably had difficulty coping with the reason for his very existence.
Melvin was thrust into foster care when he was just nine years old, where his exposure to violence, physical neglect, and abuse continued. He found solace in a loving, ongoing relationship with his sister, whom Melvin protected as best he could from their shared family dysfunction, often taking the rap for any trouble the two of them got into together.
Melvin was a person with intellectual disability, but like so many others executed under this administration, the State and courts ignored and minimized the significance of his condition. Mental health evaluators, concerned with his competency to stand trial, concluded that he was a slow learner, had impaired common sense, and was unable to plan ahead or consider the consequences of his behavior. The evaluations also noted that Melvin’s sense of reality was distorted and his inhibition reduced due to his cocaine use, which he used to dull himself from the pain of his violent conception and his unstable childhood.
Melvin was also a Black man sentenced to die for killing a white woman in a state where race continues to shape who lives and who dies. Black Floridians make up about 17% of the population, but 35% of those on death row and 25% of those executed under Governor DeSantis. In Manatee County, where Melvin was convicted, no one has ever been sentenced to death for killing a Black person.
In the final weeks of his life, Melvin’s lawyers echoed serious concerns about Florida’s lethal injection process. Concerns that arise from Florida’s own record-keeping. Instead of agreeing to a full and fair review of the disturbing new records, the State hid behind procedural rules and asked the courts for yet another rubber stamp. Though the United States Supreme Court ultimately declined to intervene, Justice Sotomayor agreed that the evidence presented by Frank Walls, Ronnie Heath, and now Melvin Trotter is troubling: “By continuing to shroud its executions in secrecy, Florida undermines both the integrity of its own execution process and, potentially, this Court’s ability to ensure the State’s compliance with its constitutional obligations.”
Melvin asked for something painfully simple: an independent review. His claims unequivocally established that the State has been at best careless, and at worst deliberately indifferent to following their established protocol. The records indicate in several of last year’s executions, the State: 1) administered expired drugs, increasing the risk of conscious pain during an execution; 2) measured incorrect dosages of drugs, raising the possibility of prolonged suffering — masked to observers because of the paralytic; and 3) used drugs unauthorized by the protocol. Autopsies from 2025 executions have also revealed pulmonary edema, causing a slow suffocating death, rather than the “easy” sedation and cardiac arrest the protocol promises.
We have seen this before. Florida has a unique and terrible history with the death penalty. We are approaching the 20th anniversary of Florida’s worst lethal injection botch, when it took 36 minutes to kill Angel Diaz in 2006. Execution team members failed to achieve and maintain venous access, torturing him and causing severe distress and pain, resulting in visible chemical burns to his arms. This botch caused then-Governor Jeb Bush to temporarily pause executions and appropriately call for an independent examination. The result of that review was a new protocol, made publicly available, that the State repeatedly swore they would follow without fail.
What has come to light during this administration’s execution spree is that the State of Florida is failing miserably in that endeavor. With the increased pace, rushed process, and ongoing toll on corrections officers forced to participate in these repeated killings, it is only a matter of time before we are right back to where we were in 2006.
Executions are not inevitable. They are not acts of nature. They are not divine mandates. They are choices, human choices, made in our name. Melvin’s killing tonight shares many of the hallmarks of the previous 29 under this administration. Unaddressed and untreated childhood abuse and trauma. Self-medication with substances. Racially disparate treatment in sentencing. Secrecy and suppression about the State’s administration of lethal injection protocol, with the State urging “just trust us,” and the courts falling for this false assurance over and over.
We, the People, must refuse to tolerate a system that kills first and answers questions later. Or, in this case, a system that seems content to answer them never.
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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.