TALLAHASSEE — Melvin Trotter, 65, was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison in Starke for a 1986 murder of a Manatee County grocery-store owner.
After being administered a three-drug injection, Trotter was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m., by the state Department of Corrections.
Last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied Trotter’s motion for a stay of execution after he raised claims that the DOC failed to follow lethal injection procedures in violation of his constitutional rights, and that executing a 65-year-old man constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
The court held that the claim about lethal injection procedures was speculative and that Trotter failed to demonstrate the risk of serious harm. As for his age, the court reaffirmed that only those under 18 at the time of the crime are exempt.
Trotter was sentenced to death for the June 1986 murder of Virgie Langford, 70, who was found by a truck driver on the floor at the back of Langford’s Grocery Store in Palmetto, according to court documents.
“She had suffered a large abdominal wound which resulted in disembowelment; there were a total of seven stab wounds,” a 1990 Florida Supreme Court decision upholding Trotter’s conviction stated. “She told the driver that she had been stabbed and robbed. Several hours after the surgery for her wounds, the victim went into cardiac arrest and died.”
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops last week asked DeSantis to commute Trotter’s sentence to life in prison without parole.
“Florida is one of the only states that allows a death sentence to be given without the full confidence of the jury making it widely recognized as unreliable,” wrote Michael Sheedy, the conference’s executive director. “Melvin’s life was shaped by severe trauma, instability, and intellectual limitations that were never meaningfully addressed in court.”
The conference has unsuccessfully made similar requests before executions throughout the year.
Sheedy raised questions about the deterrence being served in pointing to Melvin’s age and having spent nearly four decades on death row. Sheedy also noted that the state is ramping back up its pace of executions.
“The state of Florida scheduled Melvin’s execution exactly two weeks after the scheduled execution of Ronald Heath (Feb. 10) and with the execution of Billy Leon Kearse scheduled the following week (March 3),” Sheedy stated. “This pace indicates that Florida intends to execute individuals at the same rate it did last year establishing capital punishment as routine.”
Kearse, 53, is scheduled to be put to death March 3 for the 1991 killing of Fort Pierce police officer Danny Parrish during a traffic stop.
DeSantis has also signed the death warrant for Michael King, 54, to be executed March 17 for the 2008 murder of a North Port woman Denise Amber Lee, 21.
Trotter was the second execution carried out this year by the state.
Heath, 64, was put to death by lethal injection on February 10 for a 1989 murder outside Gainesville.
Florida in 2025 set a modern-era record with 19 executions. The previous record was eight executions in 1984 and 2014. The modern era represents the time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision halted it.
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