A man who had been sentenced to the final of the penalties was executed Tuesday in Florida, in the southern US, increasing to 26 the number of executions in the country since the beginning of the year, in other words the highest after a decade.

THE Michael Bell54 years old, was executed with injectable fatal chemicals in the state prison at 18:25 (local time; at 01:25 Greek time), according to the Florida prison service.

He was sentenced to death for a double murder in 1993, with victims of Jimmy West, 23, and Tameka Smith, 18, in Jacksonville. He was motivated by his desire to avenge the murderer of his brother Thodor Wright, but instead killed his brother and a young man who was with him.

Michael Bell was among about thirty deaths who passed their youth at the notorious Florida School of Boys, more well -known by the name of Doser.

This institution, where barbarism was almost daily, closed in 2011, after 111 years. It was inspiration for the novel The Nickel Boys of the author Classon Whitchend, who received a 2020 Pulitzer Prize in 2020. Anthropologists found at least 55 anonymous graves there in 2016, while deaths in the reform center are estimated to have exceeded one hundred.

Michael Bell’s execution was the 26th in the US since the beginning of the year – upon them only in Florida – with their number being the highest since 2015, when 28 were recorded. In the country at least nine more executions are projected in 2025.

“The increase in executions this year is the result of the decisions of some elected officials in a small number of states”He explained in a report last week by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC, “Information Center for the Death Penalty”).

The executions are ‘Geographically concentrated’more than half have been done in just 3 states –Florida, Texas and South Carolina-, the same source added.

Most of these executions (21) were made with injectable deadly chemicals. Three – two in Alabama, one in Louisiana – were done by the method of causing suffocation due to nitrogen inhalation, extremely controversial, as UN experts call it a form of “torture”. And two were made by executive excerpts in South Carolina; before this year, this method has been used in the country since 2010.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states. In the other three – California, Oregon, Pennsylvania – a moratorium is applied to its implementation, with decisions of their rulers.