Mark Allen Geralds, 58, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Dec. 9 in a Florida prison.
Gerards will be the 18th person scheduled to be executed in Florida in 2025, making DeSantis the most executions in a year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
The previous record was set in 2014 with eight executions.
Mr. DeSantis signed the death warrant one week before Brian Fredrick Jennings’ execution on November 13th. Another convicted murderer, Richard Barry Randolph, is scheduled to die on November 20th.
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Gerards was convicted of murder, armed robbery, burglary, and grand theft auto and sentenced to death in 1990. Although the Florida Supreme Court later reversed the sentence, the conviction was affirmed and Gerards was sentenced to death in 1993.
In February 1989, Tressa Pettibone’s 8-year-old son found her beaten and stabbed to death on the kitchen floor of her Panama City home, according to court records.
Gerards had previously done renovations on the home and knew the family’s schedule, including when the children went to school and when Pettibone’s husband was out of town for work. Investigators discovered that Gerards had pawned jewelry that had traces of Pettibone’s blood on it, and that the plastic cord used to bind Pettibone matched a necktie found in Gerards’ car.
Gerards’ lawyers plan to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
So far in 2025, 41 people have been executed in the United States. Florida leads the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. The state’s most recent execution was on October 28, against Norman Mir Grimm Jr., who was convicted of raping and murdering his neighbor.
