Florida Prepares to Execute 77-Year-Old Vietnam Veteran in 1986 Deputy Killing

William Reaves, a 77-year-old Vietnam War veteran who has spent nearly four decades on Florida's death row, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening for murdering an Indian River County sheriff's deputy in 1986 — the 18th execution Florida has carried out this year under Gov. Ron DeSantis. The lethal injection is set for 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke, according to reporting from the Associated Press, after the Florida Supreme Court rejected his final state appeals last week, with a petition still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court as of Tuesday morning.

DeSantis signed Reaves' death warrant on Sept. 18, setting the execution date five weeks out. Barring court intervention or clemency, which the governor has not granted, Florida will move one execution short of matching last year's modern-era record of 19. The state has already carried out more than half of the 31 executions performed nationwide so far in 2026.

The numbers

Reaves would become the eighth Florida prisoner executed this year who was older than 70. He was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting Indian River County Deputy Richard Raczkoski four times in the back outside a convenience store near Vero Beach on Sept. 23, 1986. A biography on the Indian River County Sheriff's Office memorial page lists Raczkoski, known to colleagues as "Raz," as born Oct. 30, 1956, making him 29 at the time he was killed after roughly eight years in law enforcement.

Florida's execution pace has been building all year. The state put Daniel Conahan Jr. to death on Sept. 10 in its 15th execution of 2026, and William Lee Thompson was executed Oct. 13 for a 1976 Miami murder, according to Fox 13 Tampa Bay's tracking of the state's death warrants. A further execution, for Jesse Guardado, is scheduled for Nov. 5 and would tie the 2025 record if it proceeds.

How Reaves ended up on death row

According to the case history maintained by the Florida Legislature's capital case tracking office, Reaves called 911 from a pay phone outside a Zippy Mart convenience store because he had no money for a taxi. Raczkoski responded and was radioing for a cab when a handgun fell from Reaves' shorts. The deputy pinned it briefly with his knee, but Reaves grabbed the weapon. As Raczkoski backed away and reached for his own sidearm, Reaves warned him off, then shot him four times as he ran. Reaves fled to a friend's home, where, according to court records, he admitted he had been high on cocaine and panicked during the struggle.

He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1987, but the Florida Supreme Court threw out that verdict in 1991 after finding that one of the trial prosecutors had previously represented Reaves in an earlier criminal case. A second jury convicted him again in February 1992 and recommended death by a 10-2 vote; a judge resentenced him to death that March. Reaves spent the following three decades filing state and federal appeals. In 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reversed a lower court's grant of habeas relief, ruling Reaves had not shown his trial lawyer's failure to pursue a voluntary-intoxication defense had prejudiced the verdict. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his final direct appeal in 2018.

Who is affected

Reaves' current appeals center on what his lawyers say the jury never heard: expert testimony linking his actions to combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder from his service in Vietnam. Trial testimony at the time referred only to "Vietnam syndrome," not a clinical PTSD diagnosis, and a federal judge later found his trial attorney ineffective for failing to have Reaves' mental health properly evaluated, ordering a new sentencing hearing before the 11th Circuit reversed on procedural grounds. Years after his conviction, Reaves' post-conviction lawyers obtained a Department of Veterans Affairs determination that he was 100% disabled due to service-related PTSD, according to the Death Penalty Information Center's account of the case, which notes that none of that evidence reached the jury that voted 10-2 for death.

His family has asked DeSantis for clemency, not a pardon, seeking only to have the sentence commuted to life in prison. Meredith Farrington, Reaves' nephew, told West Palm Beach's WPTV that he does not excuse what his uncle did but believes the case deserves a harder look at the circumstances behind it.

"I'm not going to say that his PTSD, his drug use, his being on cocaine and all the other stuff excuses what he did. ... I just want the governor to look at the whole picture," Farrington said.

Raczkoski's younger brother, Marc, has taken the opposite view, telling WPTV that nearly 40 years have not dulled the loss. "Why? Why?" he said of the killing. "It's something I wouldn't wish on anybody." Raczkoski's son, Matthew, was born after his father's death and now lives in South Carolina with his mother, according to the sheriff's office memorial page.

Reaction

More than 100 military veterans signed a letter sent to DeSantis' office this week asking him to halt the execution, citing Reaves' combat service and the unexamined PTSD claims, according to NBC News' account of the case. DeSantis, who leaves the governor's office in January under term limits, has said his priority is delivering results for the families of victims who have waited decades for executions to proceed. His office has not publicly responded to the veterans' letter.

Indian River County has marked Raczkoski's death for years. A stretch of State Road 60 near the county was renamed in his honor, and he received a posthumous Medal of Valor from the International Police Association in 1987, according to the sheriff's office. He was the first Indian River County deputy killed in the line of duty and remained the only one for nearly four decades.

What happens next

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes or DeSantis changes course before 6 p.m. Tuesday, Reaves will be executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison, the facility that has carried out all of the state's executions this year. His death would leave Florida one execution shy of tying its own modern-era record, with Guardado's Nov. 5 execution for the 2004 murder of a Walton County woman still on the calendar.

If the execution proceeds, Reaves would become the 235th military veteran executed in the United States since the modern death penalty era began, and the 14th under DeSantis, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks veteran executions nationally. The center's 2025 report, "Forgotten Service, Lasting Wounds," lists Reaves as one of a recurring set of cases in which service-related trauma went unevaluated or unpresented at trial. Whether that broader argument gains traction beyond this case will likely depend on what, if anything, the Supreme Court does with the petition still before it.