A 70-year-old shop owner named her attacker before dying, and 40 years later the state carried out the sentence

Florida executed Melvin Trotter on February 25, 2026, nearly 40 years after his conviction in the 1986 stabbing death of 70-year-old grocery store owner Virgie Langford. Trotter, 65, was put to death by lethal injection at the Florida state prison near Starke.

The execution was first reported by The Guardian, which said it was the second execution carried out by Florida this year. A spokesperson for Governor Ron DeSantis, Alex Lanfranconi, said the execution was carried out at 6:15 PM without complications.

Florida’s pace of executions has accelerated, with the state carrying out 19 executions in 2025, a figure described as unprecedented for a Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous high cited in the report was eight executions in 2014, amid El Mencho arsenal aftermath.

The case stretched across decades of appeals and resentencing

Court records described in the report say the crime occurred on June 16, 1986, when Langford was stabbed and strangled at her store in Palmetto near the southern edge of Tampa Bay. A truck driver found her bleeding but alive on the store’s back floor, and she later died at a hospital.

Before she died, Langford provided investigators with details about her attacker, including his appearance and a Tropicana employee badge bearing the name “Melvin.” Witness accounts have remained a central issue in high-profile cases, including Texas ICE witness death. The report said investigators later found a T-shirt at Trotter’s home with Langford’s blood type, and they recovered his handprint from a meat cooler inside the store.

Trotter was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1987. The Florida supreme court later found errors in how the original trial court handled aggravating factors, leading to a resentencing in 1993 that again resulted in a death sentence.

In more recent appeals, Trotter’s attorneys argued that Florida officials had mismanaged execution protocols and that his age should exempt him from execution. The Florida supreme court denied those claims, and the US supreme court denied his final appeal hours before the execution.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor raised concerns about the administration of lethal injection drugs, citing arguments that Florida could maladminister its protocol in a way that increases the risk of a mangled execution in violation of the Eighth Amendment. She said she hoped the state would recognize the importance of conducting executions consistently with proper protocols.

The Guardian reported that Florida’s Department of Corrections uses a three-drug sequence for executions: a sedative, a paralytic, and a drug intended to stop the heart. Two more Florida executions are scheduled next month, with Billy Leon Kearse set for March 3 and Michael Lee King set for March 17.