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Nobody Is There: The Horror of Executing William Silvia

Nobody Is There: The Horror of Executing William Silvia

Last updated on: July 31, 2026 at 7:31 pm by Jeff Hood

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Nobody Is There: The Horror of Executing William Silvia 2026-07-31T19:31:31-06:00 Jeff Hood

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William Silvia

Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant on July 17. Florida intends to kill William Silvia on August 18 at six in the evening at Florida State Prison. That much you can find in any newspaper in the state.

Here is what you will not find.

William hears voices.

I am his spiritual advisor. We talked last week.

William got serious very quickly.

I learned that there are conversations going on all around him…constantly…and there is nobody there. Voices arguing. Voices talking over each other. A cacophony with no bodies attached to it.

He was not making a legal argument. He was not asking me to feel sorry for him. He was telling me what it is like to be him.

Sit with that for a second. Imagine a concrete box about the size of a parking space. Now imagine that box is full of people talking and you cannot see a single one of them. You cannot leave. You cannot turn it down. You cannot tell anybody, because the officers will say you are performing and the State will say you are stalling.

That is the interior architecture of the man Florida is preparing to strap to a gurney.

Patricia Silvia is dead. Her mother Betty Woodard was shot and survived. I am not going to pretend otherwise. There is a family in Seminole County carrying twenty years of grief. That grief is real. But surely, Florida can do better than executing a man this sick.

The Waiver of William Silvia Held

Now let me tell you what the record holds.

The record holds a shotgun purchase. The record holds a jury that recommended death by a vote of eleven to one. The record holds a sentence handed down in January of 2009.

And then the record holds this.

In June of 2012, William Silvia stood up in a courtroom in Seminole County and asked to fire his own lawyers. He asked to give up his postconviction appeals. All of them. Forever.

The judge held a hearing. The judge ran the colloquy the rules require. The judge found no reasonable grounds to believe William was incompetent. The judge found the waiver knowing, intelligent and voluntary. William was told what he was doing. The specific terminology is making oneself warrant-eligible. He was told the Governor could now sign his death warrant. He was told the decision was permanent. He was told he could never change his mind.

He said yes.

The Florida Supreme Court affirmed all of it the following year. Competency was not raised on that appeal. Nobody stood up in that courtroom and shared that William was severely mentally ill. Everybody just kept letting him make decisions based on what the voices were telling him to do.

Then the law moved. The Hurst decision came down. A jury was going to have to be unanimous before the State could kill a man. William’s jury was eleven to one. The circuit court looked at that and granted him a new penalty phase. For one moment there was a door.

The State appealed. In 2018, the Florida Supreme Court closed the door. Not because William deserved to die. Because of what he had signed in 2012. The waiver held. The waiver always holds.

He tried to come back. Florida told him that he had locked the exit behind him.

And this week, with the warrant signed and the clock running, the circuit court denied his claims once more. Same reasoning. He waived. It binds him. It bars him.

So here is the arithmetic. Fourteen years ago a sick man asked the State of Florida to help him die faster. The State said yes and has been holding him to it ever since.

That is not jurisprudence. That is a trapdoor for a very sick man.

William Silvia is Just Not Sick Enough

What the public record does not hold is the sound inside William’s head.

None of this is new for Florida. Ford v. Wainwright came out of this state. In 1986, the Supreme Court said a state may not execute a man who has lost his mind. Florida has spent the four decades since grinding that holding down to almost nothing. The standard is not whether a man is sick. The standard is whether he is sick in a precise, narrow, legally convenient way.

Nineteen executions in 2025. Fourteen warrants signed already this year. Three men killed in the last month alone. That is not the careful administration of justice. That is a calendar.

The Least Of These

I am an Old Catholic priest. I believe in the Real Presence. When I put the host into a condemned man’s hand, I believe I am putting God into a condemned man’s hand. And I believe Matthew 25 means what it plainly says, “Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me.” God is literally present in those we throw away.

Not the innocent. Not the sympathetic. Not the ones who poll well.

The least of these. The maligned. The tossed out. The oppressed. The forgotten.

William Silvia is all of these things. He is a sick man in a cage listening to a room that will not go quiet. The State of Florida has looked at him and seen a date.

And on August 18, if the scheduled horror comes on time, I will be standing in that room with my hand on him. I will look him in the eye. I will tell him he is loved.

The voices will be amongst us.

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About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic priest (Old Catholic), theologian, and nationally recognized activist based in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A spiritual advisor to death row inmates across the country, Dr. Hood has accompanied more people to their executions than any other advisor in the U.S., including the first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution in 2024. His work sits at the intersection of justice, radical compassion, and public theology. Dr. Hood holds advanced degrees from Auburn, Emory, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, University of Alabama, Creighton, and Brite Divinity School, among others. He also earned a PhD in metaphysical theology and founded The New Theology School, where he serves as Dean and Professor of Prophetic Theology. Author of over 100 books—including the award-winning The Courage to Be Queer—Dr. Hood’s writings and activism have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, CNN, and more. A frequent collaborator with men on death row, he sees theology as a shared, liberative act. Dr. Hood has served on the leadership teams of organizations like the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. His activism has earned multiple awards, including recognition from PFLAG and the Next Generation Action Network. On July 7, 2016, Dr. Hood led the Dallas protest against police brutality that ended in tragedy. His actions that night saved lives, and his story is now archived in the Dallas Public Library. A father of five, husband to Emily, and friend to the incarcerated, Dr. Hood rejects institutionalism in favor of a theology rooted in people, presence, and prophetic witness. You can read more about the author here.

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