Tonight, We The People of the State of Florida killed Victor Tony Jones, a man who just nine months ago the State recognized as a victim of abuse at the state-run Okeechobee School for Boys. We killed an intellectually disabled Black man with an IQ of under 75, whose execution should have been barred by law.
In January 2025, the Florida Attorney General’s Office sent a letter to Victor, formally recognizing him as a survivor of crimes committed by state officials, making him eligible for the long-overdue compensation. In July of 2025, the State deposited this money into his prison account. These reparations and this apology were mere window dressing, as Governor DeSantis signed his death warrant 53 days later.
Suddenly, once the execution was set, the Attorney General reversed course, refusing to turn over public records relating to Victor’s abuse, at first falsely claiming no records existed. Then, the Attorney General argued that the letter “doesn’t mean he was abused” and remarkably denied that they compensated him. This is unquestionably false, and the State’s formal recognition of the abuse and his classification as a victim would have made a difference to Victor’s jury.
The reason it would have mattered? For decades, the courts dismissed Victor’s testimony of abuse as “not credible.” Prosecutors mocked him at trial, telling jurors he deserved death because he had squandered the “opportunities” Florida gave him when they sent him to a state-run “reform” school. After decades of denying any harm done at these “reform” schools, Florida finally acknowledged one of the most shameful chapters in its history — that it brutalized its young charges and caused them permanent and irreparable harm. This execution exposes the hollowness of Florida’s apology to these victims and deepens its legacy of cruelty and hypocrisy.
We recognize that the 1990 murders of Matilda “Dolly” Nestor and Jacob “Jack” Nestor were horrific and have caused lasting, profound pain for their loved ones. But executing a man whose life was shaped by the lasting effects of state-sanctioned abuse and trauma only compounds cycles of violence while denying the whole truth of Florida’s responsibility.
Victor’s execution also raises a deeper question: What duty do we owe to survivors of state-perpetrated abuse, especially those who remain vulnerable inside our prisons? Survivors do not stop being survivors just because they have committed crimes. If anything, their trauma explains how they ended up in the criminal legal system. No one has suggested that Victor get a free pass for his crime. A commutation to a life sentence would have achieved the just balance of accountability for the harm that both Victor and the State caused.
Tonight, the State of Florida buried its shameful truth, along with Victor Jones, just like it buried more than 50 children in unmarked graves on the campuses of the schools.
###
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.