William Frances Silvia, 61, was executed by the state of Florida on Tuesday evening. Photo courtesy Florida Department of Corrections/Website
Aug. 19 (UPI) — The State of Florida on Tuesday executed a 61-year-old man for murdering his estranged wife during a September 2006 cookout, marking the 13th death-row inmate the state has put to death so far this year.
William Frances Silvia was scheduled to have his sentenced carried out by lethal injection at 6 p.m. EDT at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, located about 45 miles southwest of Jacksonville. The Florida Department of Corrections said in a statement that he was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m.
The execution comes as Florida has been ramping up executions, setting the state’s modern-day record of 19 in 2025.
Silvia was also the 23rd inmate to be killed in the United States this year.
He was put to death after the U.S. Supreme Court earlier Tuesday rejected his request for a stay and days after the Florida Supreme Court did likewise last week.
William Silvia was convicted of murdering his then 39-year-old estranged wife, Patricia Silva, and attempting to murder her mother, Betty Woodard, on Sept. 22, 2006.
According to court documents, William Silvia, then 41 and living out of his car, was fired earlier that day. After losing his job, he bought a 12-gauge shotgun and ammunition and rented a room at a motel. That evening, he went to the home of Woodard and her husband, where Patricia Silvia had been living with her two teenage children from a previous marriage since separating from William Silvia in July.
The Woodards were hosting a cookout when William Silvia arrived at 9 p.m. with the weapon in his truck. Court documents state he was hoping to reconcile with Patricia Silvia, but after the two talked outside the home, she went back inside while he went to his vehicle, retrieved his shotgun, fired at least one shot into the air and walked toward the home.
Court documents state that William Silvia shot Woodard in the face as she opened the door to the carport. William Silvia continued to fire and Patricia Silvia, who was in the kitchen adjacent to the carport, was shot in the head and died at the scene. Woodard was airlifted to the hospital in serious condition but survived.
Police later arrested William Silvia in the parking lot of the motel where he had earlier rented a room.
William Silvia was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder and the jury recommended he be sentenced to death in an 11-1 vote.
Additional litigation concerning the penalty phase of his trial followed after a 2016 Supreme Court ruling struck down Florida’s capital sentencing statute for giving judges, rather than juries, the authority to make the factual findings necessary to impose a death sentence.
However, the Supreme Court of Florida reinstated his death sentence in 2018, ruling that he could not take advantage of the high court’s ruling as he had waived his right to post-conviction proceedings and counsel in 2012.
At the time, the Supreme Court of Florida had interpreted the 2016 ruling to require a unanimous jury recommendation before a death sentence could be imposed. The court later abandoned that interpretation in 2020.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty lamented Florida’s execution of a man it described as having suffered from mental illness and as a child of physical and emotional abuse who had a documented history of delusional thinking, paranoia and alcohol dependency.
“The law in Florida says we can execute the mentally ill as long as they understand the very basic concept that they are about to be killed for a crime the state says they committed,” it said in a statement.
“William posed no danger to the public. He could have spent the rest of his life in prison, or, more appropriately in a hospital. A person as ill as William needed treatment, accountability and humane confinement. None of this absolves him of Patricia’s murder, the wounds he inflicted on Betty or the pain carried by everyone whose life he changed that night.
“Tonight, Florida answered the devastation of intimate partner violence with one more deliberate act of violence,” it continued.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are at least nine more executions scheduled across the United States during the remainder of the year, including one in Florida on Sept. 1, when Harold Gene Lucas is scheduled to die for the 1976 murder of his 16-year-old girlfriend. He was 24 years old at the time of the crime.
