Florida carried out Beasley’s lethal injection Tuesday night. An execution is the sentence, not a new verdict.

An execution after a final judgment is the sentence being carried out, not a new trial verdict. On Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, Florida executed Curtis Wilkie Beasley, 77, by lethal injection at Florida State Prison for the 1995 hammer killing of Carolyn Monfort in Dundee. USA TODAY reported that he maintained his innocence, which is his position and not a finding that the conviction was wrong. The Guardian reported that the Florida Supreme Court had rejected age and cognitive-decline claims, that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene, and that the warrant was carried out.

Beasley was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery, and grand theft auto and sentenced to death in 1998, The Guardian reported. USA TODAY reported that Monfort, 62, a mother of three, was bludgeoned with a hammer at her home in Dundee, and that Beasley, then 46, had been staying there while doing maintenance at an apartment complex she managed. The Guardian reported she was found in a blood-splattered laundry room with multiple blunt-force injuries to the head, and that a bloody hammer head was wrapped in a towel nearby. Those facts are the conviction and sentence the state carried out. They are not a new finding entered on the execution date.

USA TODAY, the Associated Press, and The Guardian reported Beasley was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET after a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. The Guardian reported that a witness saw him driving what turned out to be Monfort’s car, that he was later arrested in Alabama while working under a false name, and that he was the seventh Florida prisoner over 70 executed this year. USA TODAY and The Guardian reported the execution was Florida’s 16th of 2026 and the 29th in the United States this year.

The innocence claim is not a court finding. USA TODAY reported Beasley had always maintained his innocence, and that the Florida Supreme Court denied his appeal on Sept. 22. The Guardian reported the court rejected the argument that executing a man of his age who was suffering cognitive decline would be cruel and unusual punishment, and that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene on Tuesday. With those appeals exhausted, the death sentence was carried out.