TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his ninth death warrant of 2026 on Friday for Death Row inmate Andrew Richard Lukehart -- one day after the state executed James Hitchcock.
Lukehart, 53, is scheduled to die by lethal injection June 2 at Florida State Prison in Starke, according to the warrant. The window to carry out the sentence runs from noon, June 2, through noon, June 9.
Lukehart was convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse for the February 1996 death of 5-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw, his girlfriend’s daughter, in Duval County.
The case
According to court records, Hanshaw would not lie flat as Lukehart, who was 22 years old at the time, attempted to change her diaper. Lukehart would later testify he “forcefully and repeatedly pushed her head and neck to the floor.” The infant’s body was then thrown into a nearby pond.
Lukehart left the house and drove away in his girlfriend’s Oldsmobile. He called his girlfriend about 30 minutes later and claimed an individual in a blue Chevy Blazer took Hanshaw, and that he was chasing the Blazer.
The Clay County Sheriff’s Department reported the Oldsmobile was found abandoned after being driven off the road. Lukehart turned up in the yard of a Florida state trooper.
Lukehart told officers that Hanshaw was abducted from the front of his girlfriend’s home, but later claimed the abduction occurred at a store before eventually admitting to killing the girl.
Using helicopters and divers, police searched for the body in a pond until Lukehart led detectives to a wooded area off Chaffee Road.
The trial
Lukehart testified in his own defense during the trial, telling jurors that he struck the baby with such force that she stopped breathing
“I got scared, and I started to panic, and I ran outside, threw the diaper away, and I jumped into my car and started it up and left,” Lukehart said on the stand. “I felt bad. I felt guilty.”
The jury deliberated for only an hour and a half before finding Lukehart guilty.
A jury in March 1997, a month after Lukehart’s conviction, voted 9-3 to recommend the death penalty.
There was no emotion from Lukehart in court when the jury recommendation was announced, but his mother ran out of the courtroom screaming.
Florida executions
As DeSantis continues the rapid pace of executions, following a record year of 19 in 2025, opponents to the death penalty are getting more vocal.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty on Friday announced its latest effort to gather signatures to advise DeSantis of the “vast number of people around the world who oppose this execution.”
“And even as we grieve, the machinery of execution continues,” FADP Executive Director Grace Hanna wrote. “The cell where (Hitchcock) once sat is now occupied by a new man who has been told he has a month to live.”
Hitchcock, 69, convicted in the 1976 rape and murder of his step-niece Cynthia Driggers in her bedroom in Orange County, was the sixth inmate put to death by the state this year on Thursday.
The 19 executions last year were a modern era record. The modern era represents the time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after it was halted by a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Richard Knight, 47, is the next Florida Death Row inmate scheduled to be executed.
Knight’s execution is set for May 21 for the 2000 murder of Odessia Stephens and her 4-year-old daughter, Hanessia Mullings, in Broward County.