Dusty Ray Spencer is scheduled to die by lethal injection on June 25, 2026, but his legal team is fighting to stop the execution, citing his severe medical conditions and the state’s alleged use of expired lethal drugs.
Governor DeSantis signed Spencer’s death warrant late last month, expediting a legal battle that has now reached the Supreme Court of Florida. Spencer was originally sentenced to death for a 1992 first-degree murder in Orange County. Now, his attorneys are arguing that executing the 74-year-old would violate his Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
A major focus of the newly filed appeal is the Florida Department of Corrections’ lethal injection protocol. According to the court filings, prison drug logs from a recent federal lawsuit showed that expired etomidate—the first drug in the state’s three-drug protocol meant to render an inmate unconscious—was used in seven different executions between January and September of 2025.
Spencer’s defense team claims that using compromised drugs means an inmate might remain completely conscious but paralyzed while experiencing the pain of the final two lethal drugs…