Failed Christa Pike execution attempt triggers legal fight
Attorneys are battling over the preservation of evidence following Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike’s failed lethal injection execution. Her lawyers want to secure medical records and physical evidence connected to the attempt.
Florida, Alabama and Indiana are scheduled to carry out executions Thursday, marking only the second time this year that three death row inmates have been put to death on the same day.
The first instance occurred Aug. 13, when Oklahoma, Tennessee and Alabama executed three inmates within a span of several hours.
Thursday’s execution in Florida would be the state’s 19th this year, matching the record it established in 2025. Alabama is preparing for its third execution of 2026, while Indiana is scheduled to conduct its first.
Jesse Guardado, 64, is scheduled to die in Florida after confessing to and pleading guilty to fatally stabbing a 75-year-old woman who had helped him find work and housing in 2004.
Jesse Guardado, Michael Taylor and Jeffrey Weisheit are scheduled to be executed on the same day. (Florida, Alabama and Indiana Departments of Corrections)
Guardado killed Jackie Malone in her home, then took her jewelry box, $80 and other belongings to support his drug addiction.
“Jesse Guardado has accepted responsibility for killing Jackie Malone and has consistently expressed deep remorse. Florida should accept responsibility for what it did to him as a child, too,” Grace Hanna, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said in a statement calling on the state to stop the execution.
Florida’s execution pace has accelerated since Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis began signing a series of death warrants in 2025. The state carried out a record 19 executions last year, more than any Florida governor has overseen in a single year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Florida’s executions represented about 40% of the 47 carried out across the country in 2025.
The state has also accounted for more than half of the 32 executions conducted nationwide so far in 2026. In July, Florida executed two prisoners on the same day, the first double execution by one state in nearly a decade.
In Alabama, Michael Taylor, 54, is scheduled to be executed for the 1991 murders of an older couple. The victims were beaten to death with a metal bar during a robbery at their home. Authorities later found Taylor in Birmingham, about an hour away, driving the couple’s Cadillac.
Alabama officials plan to use lethal injection, after a judge rejected Taylor’s attorneys’ challenges to the method. Taylor had previously requested execution by nitrogen gas, and his lawyers sought to preserve that option.
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Attorney Kacey Keeton speaks at a Nov. 2, 2026, event at the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery opposing Michael Taylor’s scheduled execution. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
Opponents of the death penalty asked Republican Gov. Kay Ivey to commute Taylor’s sentence to life in prison. They argued that he was only 19 at the time of the killings and was too young and immature to fully understand the consequences of his actions.
“If the state kills Michael, it is not the 19-year-old who made the worst mistake of his life who it kills. But the mature, well-respected, God-fearing man sitting in that cell today,” Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty told The Associated Press.
Ivey denied the clemency requests, allowing Taylor’s execution to proceed as scheduled.
In Indiana, Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, is facing execution for setting a 2010 house fire that killed his girlfriend’s two children, ages 8 and 5, as the couple’s relationship deteriorated.
His attorneys asked for permission to conduct additional brain scans, citing his history of head injuries and mental health problems. Republican Gov. Mike Braun denied the request.
Braun also rejected pleas to commute Weisheit’s death sentence to life in prison.
Thursday would be only the second day this year on which three people are put to death. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Weisheit’s lawyers have also questioned Indiana’s planned use of execution drugs obtained from a pharmacy scheduled to face a disciplinary hearing before the Indiana Pharmacy Board next week.
The Indiana Department of Correction said it remains confident the execution can be carried out “humanely.”
The planned executions come as lethal injection procedures face renewed scrutiny after a failed execution attempt in Tennessee in September. Death row inmate Christa Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital and was taken to a hospital. She has since been returned to prison.
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