STARKE, Fla. — Three states each executed a death row prisoner on Thursday, November 5, only the second time this year that three executions have fallen on a single day — and on the same day, California’s governor announced he is commuting all 548 death sentences in his state to life in prison, according to CNN and USA Today.
In Florida, Jesse Guardado, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. Eastern after a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. Guardado had pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing 75-year-old Jackie Malone inside her Walton County home in 2004, before stealing her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs, according to CNN. Malone, a community activist, had helped him after he was paroled from prison for armed robbery. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his request for a stay on Thursday afternoon.
Guardado was Florida’s 19th execution of 2026, tying the state’s one-year record set in 2025. In Indiana, Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 1:45 a.m. Eastern, and Alabama also carried out an execution the same day. Before this year, the last time three states executed prisoners on one day was in 2010, according to CNN.
California moves the other way
Hours before the Florida execution, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced that he is commuting the death sentences of all 548 people on his state’s death row — 529 men and 19 women — to life in prison without the possibility of parole, saying that “state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values.”
Newsom, who placed a moratorium on executions shortly after taking office in 2019, stressed that the move does not repeal California’s death penalty law and applies only to current death sentences. It will not take effect all at once: under the state constitution, commutations for people convicted of multiple felonies — 382 of the 548, more than half — require a recommendation from the California Supreme Court. If approved in full, the move would cut the number of people sentenced to death nationwide by nearly a third, the largest mass commutation of death sentences in U.S. history, according to The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization.
A country split in two
The same-day contrast captures where capital punishment now stands in the United States. Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, has signed a series of death warrants since 2025 and now accounts for a large share of the nation’s executions, with 235 people still on its death row as of November 5 — which would make it the largest in the country if California’s commutations are approved. California, which has not carried out an execution in years, is moving to close its death row by executive action in the final months of Newsom’s term, which ends in January.
Supporters of the death penalty say it delivers justice for the worst murders and closure for victims’ families. Opponents point to wrongful convictions, racial and economic disparities, and the decades prisoners spend under sentence. Thursday supplied both sides with their strongest example in years — on the same day. CNN’s report on the three executions and USA Today’s report on the California commutations have the case details.
