‘Doctor Death’, the journalist who has witnessed 105 executions in Florida

To cover an execution in Florida, John Koch, a 76-year-old radio correspondent, spends exactly $56.73. This is when, to save gas, he drives along rural roads from his home in the northern part of the peninsula to the state prison near Starke (about 62 miles south) without accelerating his old Honda above 43 mph—about 1,600 revolutions per minute.

Koch has documented every execution in the state for the past 37 years. His first was the electric chair execution of the serial killer Ted Bundy in 1989, and his most recent was the lethal injection execution of Frank Athen Walls last week. In total, he estimates he has been to 105 executions. This year, Florida set a record for executions with 19—nearly half of the 47 carried out nationwide. The previous highest number recorded in the state was eight, in 1984 and again in 2014.

The figure also represents about a fifth of all the executions Koch has covered throughout his career. Three years ago, the radio network for which he worked as a death penalty correspondent for over three decades informed him that they would be terminating his contract, so he now covers executions independently.

Koch sees fewer and fewer reporters covering this type of story and considers his work more relevant than ever. He continues to send his dispatches, though he doesn’t know if any media outlet will ever pay him for them. He doesn’t mistake windmills for giants, but he is determined to keep informing the public about how, in their name, “the most acute punishment that society can lay upon a person” is carried out.

“Why do I do executions? Well, I’m good at my job. And two, I could talk about what really is the issue. And it’s the lack of news in the communities, and dumbing down of the people, and depending on social media where everybody’s a reporter, and everybody is a truth finder, and everybody’s a photographer, and everybody’s right,” he says.

His commitment carries particular weight this year, as Florida has accelerated its use of the death penalty like never before. In contrast to the 19 executions this year, Governor Ron DeSantis signed only three execution orders between 2023 and 2024. The state did not execute anyone between 2020 and 2022. The increase comes after legal changes championed by the state government that allow juries to recommend the death penalty without unanimity—an exception shared only with Alabama—and another one that broadened the grounds for imposing it.

The shift in Florida comes amid a national climate of renewed interest in capital punishment. Late last year, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly all federal death row inmates, a decision sharply criticized by Donald Trump, who upon returning to the White House signed an executive order encouraging state prosecutors to seek new death sentences.

Abraham Bonowitz, of the organization Death Penalty Action, believes that DeSantis’ motivation is related to the fact that “he is running for president, and he has been criticized by county prosecutors for not executing enough.”

In Florida, the increase in executions has reignited criticism from civil rights organizations, which denounce irregular and archaic judicial processes, as well as the execution of people with possible intellectual disabilities, as in the recent case of Walls. The group Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty maintains that Walls had an intellectual disability and that his case should have been excluded from capital punishment following the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibits the execution of people with such disabilities.

“The spirit departs before the body”

Koch began his career as a reporter in the 1970s and was a correspondent for the Florida News Network from 1989 to 2022. He now works as a freelancer for a local radio station. He covers executions on his own and sends radio packages to his former employer and other media outlets: “I send it to them whether I get paid or not, just to be a thorn in their damned side- to know that there’s somebody out there. Especially in broadcast. I have sound bytes that nobody else has, things they care about.”

Koch, whom his colleagues have nicknamed “Doctor Death,” jokes about the sources he has cultivated throughout his long career. “I have friends in the Department of Corrections. I can bribe the screws [prison guards] and get away with it. They trust me,” he says, laughing.

Access to an execution is limited. Only family members of the victims, legal witnesses, state officials, and a priest or minister are allowed to attend. There are a dozen seats for accredited members of the press, but lately, Koch has seen only a handful of journalists attend—sometimes just one reporter from the Associated Press and himself.

Koch produces concise audio dispatches with the synthetic power of someone who has been in the business for half a century. “Killer says he is sorry - Florida’s 19th execution. Frank Athen Walls, aged 58, received the Last Rites from a Catholic priest and expressed remorse, stating, ‘I’m sorry for all the suffering I caused,’ prior to his execution by lethal injection,” begins his 63-second dispatch.

He explains that during the execution he takes notes “minute by minute” on what he is observing. “Is he breathing? Is he moving around? Is he jumping up? Is he yelling? You write that stuff down.” He also notes what the officials, the priest or the spiritual advisor do.

“There’s a lot of energy. The spirit rested before the body and the soul is destined to go. I’m very sensitive to that,” he says. After an execution, he has to take a step back and “chill” so as “not to take that home to my family.” The effects, he says, dissipate from the moment he leaves the prison until he returns home, some 60 miles away.”

“You gotta chill. You gotta put things in perspective. You’ve got to understand what you saw, what went on, it’s over with, and you move on to the next story. The biggest effect on me is economics. I’ve gotten the cost of the gas, the transportation. I’ve got to eat at least something, because it’s 10 hours before I can ever get a meal in. And so I’ve got to pay that, and it comes out to about $56.73 per execution. So I’ve got to figure out where I’m going to get that $57 from. That’s a bunch of pressure too,” he adds.

Koch fought in Vietnam in the 1960s, a period he frequently alludes to while speaking with an infectious energy punctuated by jokes and metaphors. He is also wary of the government. After serving in the military, he became an anti-war activist and says he was a victim of the FBI’s counterintelligence program at the time. “They came after us because we didn’t agree with America in Vietnam. And they were killing us. They were imprisoning us.”

Koch believes the U.S. made a mistake in electing Donald Trump, alluding to the Weimar Republic in Germany, which devolved into the Third Reich. “We’re following that path again. And he’s doing nothing more than to encourage it,” he says.

To explain himself, he makes a joke about the difference between a communist and a fascist, concluding that both are extremes, “and we cannot exist with the extremes,” and then uses a metaphor about democracy: “I liken it to that nice fancy car you got outside. That’s our constitutional republic. And the engine in that car, that is the democracy. That is the means by which the car goes. And the fuel and the lubricants are the people.”

Koch doesn’t intend to say what he thinks about the death penalty as long as he’s working. “It is the law and if people don’t like the law, then they have the right to change it. If someone reads my stuff and can figure out which side of the fence I’m on, I’m quitting. To this day, people do not know whether I’m for or against. A good journalist, if they’re worth their weight in salt, would hopefully say something similar.”

Koch says that he believes “in the Creator.” “I believe it is my responsibility to love others as myself and be a good steward of what is given to me as gifts.”

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