Andrew Lukehart
Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, was executed by the State of Florida on the evening of June 2, 2026. He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. after receiving a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison, near Starke. His was the eighth execution carried out by Florida in 2026, following a record nineteen executions in the state the previous year.
Lukehart was sentenced to death in 1997, convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw, the five-month-old daughter of his girlfriend. According to court records, he had been left to watch the infant in February 1996 while his girlfriend cared for her older child, who was ill. He told investigators he had dropped the baby, then panicked and disposed of her body in a pond. The crime was, and remains, a devastating loss — one that no account of his own history can diminish.
Yet his case raised concerns that I believe deserve to be recorded alongside the facts of the crime. Lukehart was condemned on a non-unanimous jury vote; three jurors had voted for a life sentence rather than death. His attorneys argued that medication he took for kidney disease could react dangerously with the lethal injection drugs, and that having only about a month between the signing of his death warrant and the execution deprived him of due process. The Florida Supreme Court denied his appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal the day before he died.
His defense also pointed to a life marked by profound, untreated trauma: severe childhood abuse, neurological impairment, and lifelong struggles with mental illness. These facts do not undo what happened to Gabrielle. But they are part of the fuller picture of how a person arrives at the execution chamber, and they speak to questions of proportionality and due process that outlast any single case.
Final Hours
In his final hours, Lukehart declined a last meal and received no visitors, meeting only with a spiritual adviser. When the curtain rose at 6 p.m., he was already strapped to the table with an IV in his arm, a priest seated at his feet to pray. Asked if he had a final statement, he lifted his head toward the front row of witnesses and spoke:
“I’m sorry.”
He then recited Luke 23:34 — “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
He lost consciousness within moments of the drugs being administered.
Court Records & Dockets
- Florida Supreme Court — Death Warrant Opinion (No. SC2026-0736, 2026)
- U.S. Supreme Court — Application for Stay of Execution (No. 25A1332, 2026)
- Florida Supreme Court — Direct Appeal (2000)
- Florida Supreme Court — Postconviction Appeal (No. SC12-628, 2012)
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