U.S. Army Veteran Richard Randolph (Malik Abdul-Sajjad) is scheduled to be executed in Florida on November 20, 2025, at 6 p.m. for the 1988 murder of Minnie Ruth McCollum. He has spent more than three decades on Florida’s death row.
If carried out, his execution will be the 17th in Florida this year, the most in any single year in over two centuries. Governor Ron DeSantis has already presided over more executions than any Florida governor in modern history.
From Childhood Trauma to Military Service
Richard Randolph’s life began with a devastating fracture. At five months old, he was adopted into what appeared to be a respectable middle-class family — but behind closed doors lay severe physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. His adoptive father beat him with belts, broomsticks, and closed fists, sometimes locking him in dark closets for days. His adoptive mother, battling alcoholism and mental illness, was hospitalized repeatedly for psychiatric care and often told him he was worthless. By age 10, he had been medicated for severe emotional disturbance, an early acknowledgment of psychological trauma that was never truly treated.
A Florida psychologist later described this home as “a house of chaos and cruelty,” noting that such early violence causes permanent changes in a child’s brain and capacity for trust. No one celebrated his birthdays. No one told him he was loved. The message he internalized was simple: he did not matter.
After graduating from high school, Malik sought a sense of belonging and structure by enlisting in the U.S. Army. He served honorably, a period characterized by discipline and pride, but also marked by the resurgence of unhealed trauma. Dr. Hyman Eisenstein, a post-conviction expert, noted that these years of service were a turning point for Malik. The rigid environment and emotional isolation of the military intensified his earlier wounds. In an attempt to cope with anxiety, sleeplessness, and depression, he began self-medicating with substances. After his discharge, these coping mechanisms escalated into full-blown addiction. Dr. Milton Burglass, an addiction specialist, later testified that Malik’s drug dependency was a progressive disease rather than a moral failing, and this progressive disease directly influenced the tragedy that followed.
A Broken Trial and an Uninformed Jury
Randolph’s trial did not reveal the true circumstances of his life. At the 1989 penalty phase, his lawyers called only one witness — psychologist Dr. Harry Krop — for less than half a day. Dr. Krop did not have access to any records, family interviews, or social history background, which prevented him from explaining how childhood abuse, mental illness, and addiction had influenced Randolph’s life.
The court’s sentencing order compounded this failure. It falsely concluded that Randolph was “loved by both parents,” ignoring overwhelming evidence of abuse and instability. The jury voted 8–4 for death. This bare majority recommendation would have resulted in a life sentence in every other state. Many years later, in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that Florida’s system of non-unanimous death recommendations was unconstitutional, but the decision was not retroactive, so Mr. Randolph’s death sentence stood. Even today, only in Florida can just over a bare majority of 8 jury votes be enough for a death sentence.
A Life Built on a Lie
For nearly sixty years, Randolph believed that his biological parents had abandoned him. However, in 2022, newly released New York adoption records revealed the truth: his birth mother was a 17-year-old girl who gave birth to him in a home for unwed mothers. She spent five decades searching for him and had never stopped loving him. Closed-adoption laws had kept them apart. This revelation, confirmed by Dr. David Brodzinsky, a national expert on adoption psychology, redefines Randolph’s entire life story. It highlights that his lifelong feelings of rejection, depression, and low self-worth were rooted in a deceptive system rather than in reality.
A Clemency Process Frozen in Time
Malik’s last clemency review occurred in 2014, long before the decline of his physical health, his exemplary prison record, or the discovery of the true story about his birth mother. While Governor DeSantis summarily denied relief on October 21, 2025 when the warrant was signed, it did so without reviewing any of this new information. Neither the Clemency Board nor Governor DeSantis has yet considered who Malik has become, what we now know about his life, or what mercy demands of a just society.
Faith, Transformation, and Failing Health
While incarcerated, Richard converted to Islam, taking the name Malik Abdul-Sajjad. He has spent the last 30 years studying his faith, mentoring younger men on death row, mediating conflicts, and maintaining a spotless disciplinary record for decades.
Corrections expert Raul S. Banasco who has 39 years of prison-management experience, reviewed Malik’s file. Malik has an exemplary prison record, with no evidence of violence or misconduct in decades. He concluded that Malik could safely and productively serve a life sentence and that executing him is unnecessary from any security or rehabilitative standpoint.
Malik, now 63 years old, lives with systemic lupus and several other chronic conditions. Anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot reviewed Malik’s medical records and concluded that Florida’s current three-drug lethal-injection protocol is ‘sure or very likely’ to cause pulmonary edema and suffocation while he remains paralyzed. Given Malik’s compromised lungs and immune system, executing him under these circumstances would risk causing torturous pain, which would violate the Eighth Amendment.
What Malik’s Case Reveals — and Why Mercy Matters
Richard “Malik” Randolph’s case is a mirror of everything broken in Florida’s death-penalty system:
- a child raised in abuse and neglect,
- a veteran struggling with untreated trauma and addiction,
- a non-unanimous death sentence under a system the Supreme Court condemned,
- lifesaving evidence of identity and humanity discovered decades too late,
- and a clemency process that no longer functions as the safeguard it was meant to be.
Malik has lived more years behind bars than he ever lived in freedom. He has transformed himself through faith, introspection, and service to others. Killing Malik, an aging veteran with chronic illness, sentenced by a divided jury, and denied a fair hearing, would not bring peace or justice. It would only repeat the pattern of abandonment that defined his life: ignored as a child, failed as a soldier, and forgotten as a man.
His sentence should be commuted to life so that he can continue to live out the remaining days of his natural life as a productive member of the prison community providing valuable mentorship to others.