STARK, FL– A man convicted of killing a street vendor during a robbery is scheduled to be executed Tuesday evening in the first lethal injection of the year in Florida.
Ronald Palmer Heath, 64, is scheduled to receive a three-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at the Florida State Prison near Stark. Heath was convicted in 1990 of first-degree murder, robbery with a deadly weapon, and other charges in the killing of Michael Sheridan the previous year.
The state’s first scheduled execution of 2026A follows A record 19 executions took place in Florida last year. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has presided over more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976. The previous record was eight executions in 2014.
According to court records, Heath and his brother Kenneth Heath met Sheridan at a Gainesville bar in May 1989. After hanging out at the bar for a while, the three men agreed to go somewhere else to smoke marijuana.
At some point, the brothers planned to rob the other man, investigators said. Ronald Heath led the group to a remote area, where Kenneth Heath pulled a gun on Sheridan. The man initially refused to give the brothers anything, and Kenneth Heath shot Sheridan in the chest.
While Sheridan was emptying his pockets, Ronald Heath began kicking the man and stabbing him with a hunting knife, prosecutors said. Kenneth Heath then shot Sheridan twice in the head.
The brothers dumped Sheridan’s body in a wooded area and returned to a Gainesville bar to grab items from his rental car, according to the court record. The brothers made multiple purchases using Sheridan’s credit cards the next day at a mall in Gainesville, she said.
Ronald Heath was arrested several weeks later at his home in Douglas, Georgia, after investigators linked him to the stolen credit cards. Officers recovered clothing purchased with the stolen cards, as well as Sheridan’s watch, according to court records.
Kenneth Heath was also charged with Sheridan’s murder, but was sentenced to life in prison as part of a plea agreement.
The Florida Supreme Court rejected Ronald Heath’s appeals last week. His lawyers argued that Florida corrections officials mismanaged their death penalty protocols, that the state’s secretive clemency process prevented due process, that Heath’s imprisonment as a juvenile stunted his brain development, and that jurors did not unanimously recommend the death penalty.
Heath still has similar appeals pending before the US Supreme Court.
A total of 47 people They were executed in the United States in 2025. Florida led the way with a series of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second place with five executions each that year.
Two more executions are already scheduled to take place in Florida later this month and next month. Melvin Trotter65 years old, is scheduled to die on February 24, and his death sentence will be carried out Billy Leon Kearse53, is scheduled to follow exactly a week later on March 3.
All executions in Florida are carried out by lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.