STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A man convicted of fatally shooting a police officer with his own service weapon during a traffic stop was executed Tuesday evening in Florida, becoming the third person put to death by the state this year after a record 19 executions in 2025.
Billy Leon Kearse, 53, was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was condemned for the 1991 shooting death of Fort Pierce Police Officer Danny Parrish.
The execution started just after 6 p.m. When a warden asked Kearse if he had any final words, he said all he could do was ask for forgiveness from Parrish’s family.
“To his family, I sincerely apologize for what I’ve done,” Kearse said. “There is no way I can ever repay that.”
More than a dozen family members and police officers gathered to observe the execution.
Kearse twitched briefly after the lethal drugs began entering his system but stopped moving several minutes later. It was another quarter of an hour before a medic entered the room and pronounced Kearse dead.
After the execution, Parrish’s widow, Mirtha Busbin, said she has found peace.
“It’s been a long, long 35 years,” said Busbin. “We didn’t win anything though; we lost another life, but we did get justice.”
Busbin, who works as a victim advocate for the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, said she didn’t expect Kearse to apologize, but she did appreciate it.
“I can forgive him, I can move on,” Busbin said. “It was the right thing to do.”
Court records show Parrish had pulled over Kearse for driving the wrong way on a one-way street in January of that year. After Kearse couldn’t produce a valid driver’s license, Parrish ordered Kearse out of his vehicle and attempted to handcuff him when a struggle ensued.
Kearse grabbed Parrish’s firearm during the struggle and fired 14 times, striking the officer nine times in the body and four times in his body armor, prosecutors said. A taxi driver heard the shots and called for help on the officer’s radio, but Parrish died after being rushed to a hospital. Police used license plate information called in by Parrish during the traffic stop to arrest Kearse at his home.
Kearse was initially convicted of first-degree murder and robbery with a firearm and sentenced to death in 1991. The Florida Supreme Court later found the trial court failed to give jurors certain information about aggravating circumstances and ordered a new sentencing. Kearse again drew the death penalty in 1997.
A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, far outpacing Alabama, South Carolina and Texas which each held five executions last year. The 19 Florida executions that year outstripped the previous high totals of eight in both 1984 and 2014.
Besides the three Florida executions to date this year, Texas and Oklahoma have each executed one person each so far in 2026.
Two more Florida executions are scheduled soon, starting with Michael Lee King on March 17 for the 2008 kidnap and killing of a mother of two. Former police officer James Duckett is set to be executed March 31 for the 1987 killing of an 11-year-old girl.
All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
Hours before Tuesday’s execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Kearse’s final appeal without comment. And last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied appeals filed by Kearse.
