USA: Another two executions within two days – this time in Florida and Mississippi

In the USA, one death sentence was carried out on Tuesday and one on Wednesday, one in Florida, where an execution is currently carried out every two weeks, and one in Mississippi, where an almost 80-year-old man was executed after almost half a century on death row. His execution was the 25th in the current year 2025, meaning that the USA executed as many people in the first half of 2025 as it did in the whole of 2024.

Thomas Gudinas

On Tuesday evening, 51-year-old Thomas Gudinas was executed by lethal injection by the US state of Florida. He was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a young woman in 1994. In his final words, he declared his remorse for the crime.

The statement by the organization Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) points out in detail that Thomas Gudina’s life was marked by severe trauma until the crime he committed at the age of 20:

“Tommy was born to a teenage mother and spent the first two weeks of his life in hospital fighting for his life and developing slowly. In the first six months of his life, he had to return to hospital six times because he had stopped breathing.

Adding to his health problems was chronic abuse – Tommy experienced a childhood of cruel and humiliating punishments at the hands of his father, who burned his hand over an open flame and left him outside with a sign saying he had wet the bed.

By the time his childhood was over, Tommy had only had an education up to 4th grade and had been funneled through 105 different child welfare placements.”

His mother visited Gudinas on the day of his execution. His sister and cousin are also among the mourners. It was the seventh execution in Florida this year and the next one is already scheduled for mid-July. Florida is currently the US state that carries out the most death sentences.

Richard Jordan

On Wednesday evening, 79-year-old Richard Gerald Jordan was executed by lethal injection by the US state of Mississippi. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a 35-year-old woman in 1976 – he had waited almost 50 years on death row for his sentence to be carried out.

Jordan had kidnapped and shot his victim in order to extort a sum of 25,000 dollars from her husband under the pretext that the woman was still alive. In his last words, he expressed remorse and asked for forgiveness.

Due to legal uncertainties regarding the legality of the death penalty in Mississippi, Richard Jordan was sentenced to death four times – the first time in 1976 and the last time in 1998. This was followed by appeal proceedings.

In none of the trials did it come up that Jordan was a war veteran. He had fought in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969 and subsequently suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. As a result, according to the argument in his petition for clemency, he should not have received the death sentence for his crime.

“Richard is all of these things: a patriot, a Vietnam veteran, a man of faith, a good son, brother and friend, and he is an exemplary inmate who has worked to ensure that such crimes never happen again,” wrote law professor Frank Rosenblatt, who submitted the clemency petition for Jordan. But the governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, rejected the request for clemency on the evening before the execution.

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/24/florida-execution-michelle-mcgrath-thomas-lee-gudinas
https://www.fadp.org/statement-on-the-execution-of-tommy-gudinas/
https://mississippitoday.org/2025/06/25/mississippi-executes-richard-jordan/
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/06/25/richard-gerald-jordan-execution-edwina-marter-mississippi/84356855007/