Florida executes Daniel Conahan after courts reject final DNA-testing appeal

Execution follows last judicial challenges

Florida executed Daniel Owen Conahan Jr by lethal injection on September 10 after the US Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court declined his final efforts to stop the sentence. State officials recorded his death at 6:12 p.m. Eastern time. Conahan, 72, had been convicted of kidnapping and murdering Richard Allen Montgomery in 1996.

Montgomery’s body was found in woodland in southwest Florida, in an area where investigators discovered the remains of at least six people over roughly three years. The series became known as the Hog Trail Murders because bodies were recovered from swampy, wooded locations. Authorities considered Conahan a person of interest in the other deaths, but he was prosecuted only for Montgomery’s killing.

Conahan waived a jury trial and was convicted by a judge of murder and kidnapping in 1999. He maintained his innocence and argued that the evidence was circumstantial. His final state appeal requested additional testing of DNA gathered from Montgomery and the crime scene. Florida’s highest court rejected the request, reasoning that discovering another person’s DNA would not by itself exonerate Conahan. The US Supreme Court then declined his final application on the day of the execution.

Florida’s rising execution count

The execution was Florida’s 15th of 2026, accounting for more than half of the 24 executions conducted across the United States by that date. The state had already carried out 19 executions in 2025, its highest annual total since capital punishment was restored in 1976. The pace makes Florida a central jurisdiction in the renewed national debate over execution protocols, post-conviction evidence and the finality of capital sentences.

Federal and state capital punishment are legally separate systems, but the broader policy climate favours expanded enforcement. A January 2025 White House executive order directed the US attorney general to pursue federal death sentences where legally appropriate and to assist states in obtaining lethal-injection drugs. That order did not decide Conahan’s case, which arose under Florida law, but it confirms the administration’s support for more active use of capital punishment.

The completed execution ends Conahan’s litigation but not the policy questions raised by his DNA request. Future scrutiny will centre on Florida’s remaining execution schedule, whether courts alter their standards for testing evidence in older cases and whether the state surpasses its 2025 record before the end of the year.