STARK, Fla. — The execution chamber fell silent at 6:24 p. m.
on March 3, 2026, as Billy Leon Kearse became the 22nd person put to death in Florida in just over a year, ending a 34-year legal odyssey that began with a routine traffic stop and the murder of a young police sergeant.
Kearse, 53, was pronounced dead after receiving a three-𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 lethal injection at Florida State Prison. He had spent more than half his life on death row, convicted in the 1991 killing of Fort Pierce Police Sergeant Danny Thomas Parish, who was shot 14 times during a traffic stop.
The execution capped a frenetic 33-day period after Governor Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant on January 29. Kearse’s legal team fought every minute, filing emergency appeals to state and federal courts, and finally to the U. S.
Supreme Court. All were denied, the high court rejecting the final petition without comment hours before the execution.
Sergeant Parish, a three-year veteran of the force, was 29 years old on the night of January 18, 1991. He stopped a vehicle driving the wrong way down a one-way street in Fort Pierce. Inside was 18-year-old Billy Leon Kearse, who could not produce a valid driver’s license.
When Parish ordered Kearse out and attempted to handcuff him, a struggle erupted. Kearse grabbed the officer’s firearm and fired 14 times. Nine rounds struck Parish in the body; four were stopped by his vest.
But the damage was fatal. A taxi driver heard the shots, grabbed Parish’s radio, and called for help. Parish died at the hospital.
Kearse was arrested, charged with first-degree murder, and quickly convicted. The original trial jury recommended death. But the case did not end there.
Over the next three decades, Kearse’s defense advanced a powerful argument: that he was intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for execution under the 2002 Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia.
His attorneys pointed to evidence of fetal alcohol exposure, developmental delays, and a childhood defined by extreme poverty and neglect. They commissioned IQ tests and evaluations of his adaptive functioning, concluding he fell within the range that would bar his execution under the Eighth Amendment.
The Florida Supreme Court later agreed that the original jury had not been given critical information about mitigating circumstances. A new sentencing hearing was ordered in 1997, but a second jury again returned a death sentence. The state argued that Kearse’s evaluations were insufficient and that the courts had repeatedly rejected his claims.
For 34 years, that debate bounced between state courts, federal district courts, the 11th Circuit, and the U. S. Supreme Court.
Each time, the answer was the same: the sentence would stand.
When the death warrant was signed, Kearse’s lead attorney of nearly 20 years was not in a courtroom. He was at a hospital with his father, who was being moved to hospice. The father died during the proceedings.
The defense continued anyway.
In his final hours, Kearse declined a last meal. He met with a spiritual advisor. Corrections officials described him as calm and in good spirits.
He sent a message to friends and family, urging them to carry forward love, not anger, even toward those who supported his execution.
Just before 6 p. m. , Kearse was led into the execution chamber.
He faced the witnesses, including members of Sergeant Parish’s family, and spoke directly to them.
“To his family, I sincerely apologize for what I have done,” he said. “And in turn, I pray my father would give me the strength to ask for their forgiveness, to give you peace and resolve.”
He acknowledged that his death would not undo Parish’s. He asked for forgiveness anyway.
The drugs were administered. Kearse twitched briefly, then stopped moving within minutes. A medic entered after about 15 minutes.
At 6:24 p. m. , he was pronounced dead.
Outside the prison gates, a small group of people gathered quietly. A bell tolled.
The execution did not close the conversation. It reopened it. Supporters of the death penalty said justice was finally served for a young sergeant who made a routine stop and never came home.
They noted the process had run its course through every level of appeal over 34 years.
Opponents pointed to the compressed 33-day window between the warrant and the execution, the unaddressed claims of intellectual disability, and the haste they said prevented proper litigation of final appeals. Both sides found an audience. Neither convinced the other.
Danny Thomas Parish was 29. He had three years on the force. He made a routine traffic stop.
He never went home. Billy Leon Kearse was 18 when he pulled the trigger. He was 53 when the state carried out his sentence.
In between were 34 years of courts, appeals, and legal proceedings that touched on some of the most debated questions in American criminal justice. What does justice look like for a crime this serious? What does the law owe a victim?
What does it owe a defendant? How does a process that spans three decades serve the people it is meant to serve, on both sides?
This case did not answer those questions. It simply put them in front of the public one more time.
Kearse was executed at 6:24 p. m. on March 3, 2026.
Sergeant Parish has been gone since January 18, 1991. Those are the facts. What they mean is something each person will have to decide for themselves.