William Frances Silvia, convicted of fatally shooting his estranged wife at a family cookout in 2006, faces lethal injection Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison, the state's 13th execution this year and part of a pace that accounts for more than half of all U.S. executions in 2026.
Silvia, 61, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. local time at the prison near Starke, Florida. He was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder for an attack that killed Patricia Silvia and wounded her mother, Betty Woodard. Court records show Silvia purchased a shotgun, drove to Woodard's Orlando-area home where his wife had been living since their separation two months earlier, and opened fire on both women after a failed attempt to reconcile. The family was in the middle of a cookout when he arrived.
A jury first sentenced Silvia to death after a 2008 trial. That sentence was later vacated on appeal over questions about Florida's death penalty sentencing procedures. A new penalty phase in 2018 produced the same result: death.
His legal team, represented by the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, the state agency that provides lawyers to death row inmates, argued the agency could not give Silvia adequate representation because it was already assisting another condemned prisoner. The Florida Supreme Court rejected that claim. A final appeal remained pending before the U.S. Supreme Court at the time of the Associated Press report.
Silvia's execution would bring Florida's 2026 total to 13, out of 22 nationwide. No other state comes close. In 2025, Florida led the country with 19 executions, a state record since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Forty-seven people were executed across the United States that year.
In July, Florida put two prisoners to death on the same day, the first state in nearly a decade to carry out a double execution. Two more executions are already on the calendar for September.
Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is scheduled to die on September 1. Lucas was convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, faces execution on September 10 for kidnapping and strangling a man he had paid to pose for nude photos. Authorities suspect Conahan of similar homicides in the 1990s in southwest Florida.
The pace reflects Gov. Ron DeSantis's willingness to carry out the sentences Florida juries impose. Under his leadership, the state has moved through its death row docket faster than at any point in modern history. The numbers speak for themselves: 19 executions in 2025, 13 so far in 2026, and more scheduled.
Florida uses a three-drug lethal injection protocol. The Florida Department of Corrections administers a sedative, followed by a paralytic agent, and finally a drug that stops the heart.
Silvia's case followed a long legal path, 20 years from the crime to the execution date, with a full retrial of the penalty phase along the way. His attorneys exhausted state appeals and reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Whether the high court would intervene remained an open question at the time the execution was scheduled.
Patricia Silvia and Betty Woodard waited two decades for the state to carry out the sentence a jury imposed. For families who endure that kind of wait, a functioning justice system is not an abstraction. It is the bare minimum a government owes the people it failed to protect.
