Florida Executes Billy Leon Kearse 35 Years After Fort Pierce Officer's Murder

Billy Leon Kearse was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison, executed by lethal injection for the 1991 murder of Fort Pierce Police Sgt. Danny Parrish — a killing so brutal it drew a sitting governor to the Treasure Coast and left a community scarred for more than three decades.

It was Florida's third execution of 2026 and the fifth in the United States this year, underscoring what death penalty observers call an aggressive push by the state to reduce a death row population of roughly 250 inmates.

Parrish, 29, was working a routine patrol on Jan. 18, 1991, when he pulled over Kearse — then 18 years old and already carrying a record of at least 12 arrests — for driving the wrong way on a one-way street in Fort Pierce. Fearing a return to jail on a parole violation, Kearse gave the officer false names. Parrish eventually moved to arrest him for driving without a license.

What happened next, according to court records and Kearse's own statements to detectives, was swift and savage. Kearse seized Parrish's own service weapon and shot the officer more than a dozen times — rounds that struck his bulletproof vest and rounds that did not. Parrish begged for his life. Kearse kept firing.

"His life oozing from his body, Kearse stood over him with Danny's firearm as Danny laid on the ground begging for his life," St. Lucie State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl said at a news conference last month. "Billy Leon Kearse in cold blood premeditatedly and calculatedly executed a law enforcement officer."

Parrish's widow, Mirtha Busbin, witnessed the execution Tuesday. She had waited 35 years for it.

"It's been a long time coming," Busbin told USA Today this week. "I can't see keeping him alive 35-plus years while Danny had just a few seconds. It's just not right."

Kearse's legal team had mounted a final push to halt the execution, arguing he was too mentally incapacitated to be legally executed and that his original trial was fundamentally unfair. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected both arguments Tuesday, hours before the lethal injection was administered.

Parrish was no ordinary recruit. Originally from Indiana, he was an Eagle Scout and Army mechanic who specialized in low-boy rigs before Fort Pierce hired him — first as a mechanic, then as a sworn officer According to available information,. He was 29 years old and, according to his widow, dreamed of becoming a father.

The murder reverberated far beyond St. Lucie County. Then-Gov. Lawton Chiles flew to Fort Pierce to meet with Parrish's family and presented Busbin with an American flag. A life-sized statue of Parrish now stands in front of the Fort Pierce Police Department. A nearby park bears his name.

Kearse, for his part, reportedly requested forgiveness before his death According to available information,.

The execution arrives as Florida's pace of capital punishment draws renewed scrutiny from civil liberties advocates who argue the state is moving too fast through its death row caseload without adequate review of mental competency and trial fairness claims — the exact arguments Kearse's attorneys raised and the Supreme Court swiftly dismissed.

For Busbin and the Fort Pierce officers who knew Danny Parrish, Tuesday's events carried a different weight entirely.

"Danny came upon a wolf," Bakkedahl said last month. That wolf, the state of Florida concluded, had run out of time.

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