William Reaves Jr.

The backstory

Background

Reaves was 37 and had prior felony convictions in September 1986.⁷⁴ The Commission on Capital Cases listed convictions for robbery in 1973, grand theft in 1979 and sale of heroin in 1984.⁷ Richard Raczkoski, 29, was a deputy with the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office who had begun his law enforcement career in 1979.⁸¹⁶

The shooting

At about 3 a.m. on Sept. 23, 1986, Raczkoski responded to a 911 call from a phone booth outside a Zippy Mart near Vero Beach, according to the Florida Supreme Court. He radioed that he had arrived and asked about outstanding warrants for William Reaves.¹ By Reaves’s confession, he had called 911 because he had no money for a taxi, and the deputy called a cab for him.³ The federal appeals court wrote that while the deputy was there, a .38-caliber pistol “somehow slipped from the waistband of his short pants and fell to the ground,” and that Reaves, a convicted felon, believed he was “facing a mandatory three years for possessing a firearm” and “did not want to go back to prison.”⁴

According to the 11th Circuit, Reaves “picked up the pistol, and pointed it in the deputy’s face”; the deputy “managed to back away, turn, and run,” and Reaves “emptied the entire seven-round clip of his pistol.”⁴ “Reaves then shot the deputy in the back four times,” the Florida Supreme Court wrote in 2006.³ The deputy was found near the phone booth with four gunshot wounds and died later that morning.¹ The court also noted that the deputy’s gun “had been fired three times.”³

Flight and confession

Reaves fled into the woods behind the store and walked about seven miles to a friend’s home, where he asked to shower and for a change of clothes, the 11th Circuit wrote.⁴ The friend testified that Reaves told him the deputy pleaded for his life and that Reaves replied, “One of us got to go, me or you.”⁵⁴ Reaves then took a Greyhound bus to Albany, Georgia, where he gave authorities a false name and was arrested.⁴ News reports say the arrest came three days after the shooting.⁹

In a taped confession, Reaves described the shooting in detail and said repeatedly that he had been high on cocaine.⁴ He said he fired because he was frightened, “because he had been using cocaine and because the deputy had reached for his own gun,” the Florida Supreme Court wrote.³ He also said he “couldn’t let that officer get that gun,” according to the 11th Circuit.⁵

The first trial

A jury convicted Reaves of first-degree murder in September 1987 and unanimously recommended death, and he was sentenced to death on Sept. 2, 1987.⁹⁷ In 1991 the Florida Supreme Court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial because the prosecutor had previously represented Reaves as his public defender.¹⁷

The retrial

At the 1992 retrial, Reaves’s lawyer argued that the killing was an excusable homicide. The judge excluded from the guilt phase a defense psychologist’s testimony that Reaves had “Vietnam Syndrome.”⁴¹ After nine hours of deliberations, during which it asked the judge about the definition of premeditation, the jury convicted him of premeditated first-degree murder.⁴¹ It recommended death by a vote of 10 to 2, and the judge sentenced him to death on March 6, 1992.¹⁷

Why the court chose death

The judge found three aggravating circumstances, listed in full below: that Reaves had a prior conviction for a violent felony, that the murder was committed to avoid arrest, and that it was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.¹ He found no statutory mitigating circumstances. He found three nonstatutory ones: that Reaves “was honorably discharged from military service, had a good reputation in his community up to the age of sixteen, was a considerate son to his mother, and was good to his siblings.”¹

At the penalty phase, a defense psychologist testified that Reaves was under extreme mental or emotional disturbance; he diagnosed antisocial personality disorder, polysubstance abuse and “Vietnam Syndrome,” which the 11th Circuit described as a sub-clinical form of PTSD.⁴⁵ A psychiatrist called by the state testified that Reaves “was really not suffering from a psychiatric illness.”⁵ The Florida Supreme Court held that the judge could rely on the state’s expert and did not abuse his discretion in rejecting the statutory mental mitigators.¹

The direct appeal

On April 7, 1994, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence.¹ It agreed with Reaves “that the deputy’s death from gunshot wounds was not heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” but found the error harmless “in view of the two other strong aggravating factors” and the relatively weak mitigation, concluding there was no possibility of a lesser sentence.¹ It also found errors in the exclusion of a witness’s prior inconsistent statements, a prosecutor’s reference to Reaves as a cocaine seller and the admission of evidence about cocaine sales, and held each harmless.¹ The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case in November 1994.⁷¹⁰

State postconviction

Reaves argued that his trial lawyer failed to present mitigation, including his impoverished childhood, his military background, his drug addiction, the death of his sister and a 1973 incident in which he helped a jail guard.² In 2002 the Florida Supreme Court held that the evidence was irrelevant or cumulative and would not likely have changed the outcome, but it ordered a hearing on whether his lawyer should have presented a voluntary intoxication defense.² After that hearing, the court held in 2006 that the lawyer’s choice of an excusable homicide defense was reasonable. Justice Anstead dissented in part.³ In 2018 the court held that the 2016 Hurst decisions, which changed Florida’s death-sentencing procedure, do not apply to Reaves because his sentence became final in 1994. Justice Pariente concurred in the result but wrote that she would have granted him a new penalty phase.⁶

Federal habeas

A federal district court granted Reaves a new trial on the intoxication claim. In 2013 the 11th Circuit vacated that ruling, holding that under Florida law at the time the combined-effects expert testimony would not have been admissible and that undisputed evidence showed he formed premeditated intent.⁴ Killing an officer to avoid arrest was “a bad decision, a stupid decision, an immoral decision, and a criminal decision,” the court wrote, but not “bizarre enough” to show he could not premeditate.⁴ The district court then granted relief again, on a theory that the combined effect of his lawyer’s errors made the sentence unfair. On Sept. 28, 2017, the 11th Circuit reversed, holding that Reaves had never pleaded that claim, and ordered the petition denied.⁵

The 2026 death warrant

In May 2024, Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers wrote to DeSantis asking that Reaves be executed.¹² According to the circuit court, a clemency proceeding began in 2023; clemency was denied.¹³¹⁰ DeSantis signed the death warrant on Sept. 18, 2026.⁹¹⁰

Reaves’s lawyers raised three claims in the circuit court: newly disclosed allegations about the friend who testified against him, problems with his clemency proceedings, and a challenge to lethal injection. On Oct. 2, the court denied all three without a hearing, calling them untimely and procedurally barred, among other grounds.¹³ The same day, his lawyers filed a habeas petition in the Florida Supreme Court arguing that the jury had “struggled with” whether the crime was first-degree murder.¹³ On Oct. 5 they asked the Florida Supreme Court for a stay, arguing that his severe hearing impairment means the execution protocol cannot reliably confirm he is unconscious.¹⁴¹⁵

On Oct. 14, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the circuit court and denied a stay.¹⁷¹⁸ According to the Tampa Free Press, it held that there is no constitutional right to public records or effective legal help in clemency, that the lethal injection challenge was untimely and procedurally barred, and that the habeas petition was an improper attempt to get around procedural limits.¹⁷

The execution

His lawyers’ final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court argued, among other things, that jurors were never told the Department of Veterans Affairs had rated him 100% disabled because of PTSD from his service in Vietnam, according to the Associated Press as published by Police1.¹⁸ More than 100 military veterans wrote to DeSantis the day before the execution asking him to halt it.¹⁸ On the afternoon of Oct. 20, the Supreme Court denied a stay and his petition for review without comment.¹⁹

The execution began shortly after 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke, using the state’s three-drug protocol of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart.¹⁸ Asked whether he had any last words, Reaves said, “No, I do not.”¹⁸ He was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m.¹⁸¹⁹ He was the eighth Florida prisoner over 70 put to death in 2026.¹⁸

After the execution, Deputy Raczkoski’s brother said his brother had finally received justice.¹⁸¹⁹ Sheriff Eric Flowers said he saw it as closure rather than justice: “Would we all be so lucky to be 77 years old and to die so peacefully,” he said. “That’s not justice in any way, in my opinion.”¹⁹¹⁸

Personal backstory

Early life

Reaves was born on Dec. 30, 1948.⁷ The sources reviewed do not say where he grew up. At his 1992 penalty phase, a minister described him as “a good Bible student,” and another witness described him as a model student, according to the 11th Circuit.⁵ His sister testified that before the Army he was “very gentle, caring, and obedient,” and a devout Christian.⁵ The judge found that he had a good reputation in his community up to age 16.¹ His postconviction lawyers later described his childhood as impoverished.²

Vietnam

Reaves was drafted and arrived in Vietnam in November 1969, the 11th Circuit wrote. Two soldiers who served with him testified at the penalty phase about an ambush that killed two members of his squad; one estimated they were in six to eight firefights.⁵ He was honorably discharged.¹ A witness called by the state described his medals as “rather unremarkable and very routine” and testified that he had been court-martialed for theft.⁵ After he came home, his sister testified, he was anxious and tense and could not join family dinners.⁵ His sister died shortly after he returned from Vietnam, the Florida Supreme Court noted.²

Drugs

Witnesses testified that Reaves began using drugs after he returned from Vietnam.⁵ His postconviction motion described a heroin addiction for which he was treated after he came home in November 1970.⁵ He said in his confession that he was high on cocaine at the time of the shooting.⁴

Mental health

The defense psychologist at his retrial diagnosed antisocial personality disorder, polysubstance abuse and “Vietnam Syndrome,” and testified that Reaves did not meet all the criteria for PTSD.⁵ The state’s psychiatrist testified that he was not suffering from a psychiatric illness, and the trial judge rejected the statutory mental mitigators.⁵¹ In 2003 he was found eligible for veterans’ benefits “based on a finding of 100% disability due to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),” the Florida Supreme Court noted.³⁵ Experts at his 2003 hearing testified that cocaine intensified his paranoia, hypervigilance and impulsivity.⁴ His lawyers say he has a severe hearing impairment.¹⁵

Life on death row

Reaves has been in custody since his arrest in 1986.⁴ The Commission on Capital Cases recorded two minor disciplinary infractions at Union Correctional Institution, in 1995 and 2000.⁷ He was 77 at his death.¹⁸ The sources reviewed contain no statement from Reaves after the warrant was signed, other than his reply when asked for last words.