Florida has executed a 74-year-old inmate who spent five decades on death row for shooting his teenage ex-girlfriend seven times even as she begged for her life. It's the first of eight scheduled executions in the U.S. in September, the most in a single month since 2010.
The state executed Harold Gene Lucas by lethal injection on Tuesday, Sept. 1, for the 1976 murder of 16-year-old Jill Piper in Bonita Springs, halfway between Fort Myers and Naples on Florida's Gulf Coast. Lucas was 24 at the time of murder.
Lucas, who was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. ET, became the 14th inmate executed in Florida this year, by far the most of any state. Florida governor Ron DeSantis continues an aggressive death penalty push as the end of his term approaches.
Lucas chose to accept his execution and waive further appeals after DeSantis signed his death warrant in July.
“I am 75 years old," Lucas recently told a court, though his 75th birthday would have been on Halloween. "I've been on death row for 50 years, and I have no desire to carry this any further . . . The sooner it's over, the better I'll enjoy it. I am tired."
Jill's brother, Buck Piper, told the Gulf Coast News that his father died waiting for justice but said that his 86-year-old mother would be front and center among the witnesses to the execution.
"They never got over the loss of their daughter," he told the station. "It's something that still weighs on her mind to this day."
Here's what you need to know about the execution, the crime, and why September is setting up to be the busiest single month for executions in 16 years.
What was Harold Gene Lucas convicted of?
On Aug. 14, 1976, Lucas had been drinking and doing hard drugs, got in a fight at a gas station, and told his friends he was going to "put that little (expletive) in a hole," according to court documents.
As Jill was returning home from a dance around midnight with two friends −17-year-old Terri Rice and 19-year-old Richard Byrd Jr. − Lucas was lying in wait. Lucas fired four gunshots into Piper's back, and Rice and Byrd ran inside to call for help, court records say.
Though bleeding from the gunshot wounds, Piper was able to run inside. But Lucas followed, took her back outside and shot her three more times, including once in the back of the head, after she pleaded for her life. He then shot Byrd in the stomach and Rice in the hip. Both of them survived.
Lucas and Jill had dated for about four years when she broke up with him after an argument.
Part of the reason it has taken Florida so long to execute Lucas is because his death sentenced was vacated several times over the years, largely over procedural errors. Lucas has been re-sentenced to death altogether four times over the decades.
"It was an execution, pure and simple," prosecutor John Dommerich argued to jurors just before Lucas was sentenced to death for a fourth time in 1987, according to an archived story in the Naples Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Network. "He executed her when she begged for her life."
Lucas' attorneys had argued that he deserved mercy, saying he would never have killed Jill if he hadn't been drunk and high on hard drugs that night, including PCP.
Who was Jill Piper?
At 16, Jill Piper was just getting started in life and was known for being just as sweet as she could be spunky, her younger brother, David Piper Jr., told the Naples Daily News on the 30th anniversary of her murder in 2006.
By 13, she could military-press 100 pounds. And she had no problem putting men in their place, he said.
"She was tough," David Piper said at the time. "It was a scrappy little town here for many, many years, and she could take most of the guys, no problem ... But you can't fight bullets."
Even at 13, David Piper said he knew that Lucas was bad news and warned his sister to stay away from him. But, he said, Jill saw the good in everybody.
"She cared about people to the extreme," he said. "That's why she didn't get to live a long, fruitful life. Sometimes when people care to the extreme, they leave themselves wide open for dangerous situations to occur."
He told the newspaper that he tried not to think too much about his sister and didn't keep photos of her around.
"The only thing that will help is when Gene Lucas is put to death," he said.
September is busy month for executions
Eight executions are scheduled to be carried out in five states this month. The executions include that of Christa Pike, the first woman set to be put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
The last time at least eight executions were carried out in a single month in the U.S. was in 2010, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data tracked by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. That year, five states carried out nine executions in the month of May.
This month's spate of executions comes amid an overall uptick in the death penalty in the U.S. in the last two years. In 2025, 11 states executed 47 inmates, the most in any single year since 2009. So far this year, 24 inmates have been executed, with another 13 on the calendar through December, though more are expected to be added.
Experts attribute the increases to a friendlier death penalty climate under President Donald Trump and Florida's particularly aggressive execution push in the last two years.
Of the 71 executions carried out in the U.S. since 2025, Florida accounts for 32 of them. That's 45%, and that figure is increasing. Of this year's 24 executions, Florida has carried out 14. That's 58%.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who decides which inmates are executed and when, has been drawing increasing criticism from death penalty opponents and observers who say the governor is being motivated by political ambition ahead of the 2028 presidential election and is "increasingly treating executions as routine instruments of political power," according to a recent statement from Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
DeSantis, whose second term as governor ends in January, has said he wants to give closure to families who have waited for justice sometimes longer than four decades.
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers cold case investigations and the death penalty for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: He killed his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend 50 years ago. Florida just executed him.
