Gov. DeSantis signed record-tying 19th death warrant for Florida man who killed his cellmate so he could be executed
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his record-tying 19th death warrant of the year Thursday, this one for an inmate who killed his cellmate as an escape to better jailhouse conditions afforded on death row.
The warrant signed by DeSantis is for James "Chicken Head" Robertson, 63, who is set to be the first of two executions to occur by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Stark on Oct. 13.
Robertson is to be put to death for the 2008 murder of his cellmate, Frank Hart, at Charlotte Correctional Institution. He is slated to be the 17th inmate killed by the state this year, bypassing two others already awaiting execution.
Robertson's execution is set for noon, while William Lee Thompson, 74, is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. on Oct. 13 for the murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery of Sally Ivester 50 years ago in North Miami Beach.
William Reaves, 77, is set to be executed Oct. 20 for the 1986 killing of Indian River County Sheriff's Deputy Richard Raczkowski.
How the 2008 murder of Robertson's cellmate happened
Robertson, who had been in and out of prison since burglary and assault charges in Orange County in 1980, strangled Hart with a garrote made of tied-together socks on Dec. 10, 2008.
"According to Robertson's admissions, there was no provocation or fight that led to the murder," Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote in a letter to DeSantis on Thursday. "Robertson stated that he murdered his cellmate so that he would be charged with first-degree murder and be sentenced to death."
Robertson entered a guilty plea, waived a jury penalty phase, and was sentenced to death on Dec. 18, 2012.
The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and death sentence in 2016.
In 2014, a sharply divided Florida Supreme Court ordered Robertson's lawyer to remain on the case during the direct-appeal process, after the public defender argued that Florida Bar rules required him to represent his client's wishes.
Robertson was also the subject of the first episode of the 2018 Netflix series "I Am A Killer," where he discussed killing his cellmate because he wanted the better jailhouse conditions on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.
"I got put on some kind of like long-term maximum-security status, where you're locked in a cell all the time," Robertson said of conditions at Charlotte Correctional in the documentary-style show. "They took everything from me, like the TV, that's torture. You're locked in a cell all day. You might get to come out a couple times a week for like two hours or something like that and they'll put you in a little dog cage. You just lose all motivation. You ain't getting no sun, really."
The state executed 19 inmates last year, the most for a single year since the U.S. Supreme Court ended a pause on executions in 1976.
This will be the second time this year the state has scheduled two executions to occur on the same day.
On July 28, the state executed Dominick Anthony Occhicone about five hours after James Aren Duckett was put to death. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty described the twin executions as an "unprecedented escalation" of the state's use of the death penalty.