He was on probation for baby's beating. Then he killed a 5-month-old.

Florida is set to execute a man this week for killing his girlfriend's 5-month-old daughter, a crime that happened while he was on probation for beating an 8-month-old baby.

Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, is set to be executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, June 2, for the 1996 murder of 5-month-old Garbrielle Hanshaw. If the execution moves forward as expected, Lukehart will be the 15th inmate put to death in the U.S. this year and the eighth in Florida, far more than any other state.

Lukehart's case stands out because he beat Gabrielle to death while he was on probation for beating a previous girlfriend's daughter so badly that he fractured her skull, and broke both her legs, an arm, and two ribs. He hurt the first girl in 1994, served just 10 months in county jail after pleading guilty, and then murdered Gabrielle the next year on Feb. 26. 1996.

"He killed my baby," Gabrielle's mother, Misty Rhue, wept as she spoke to the Florida Times-Union − part of the USA TODAY Network − in 1997.

Here's what you need to know about the execution, the case and why Lukehart says he hit Gabrielle.

When is Andrew Richard Lukehart's execution?

Florida is set to execute Lukehart by lethal injection at 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday, June 2, at the Florida State Prison near Starke.

What was Andrew Richard Lukehart convicted of?

On Feb. 26. 1996, 22-year-old Andrew Richard Lukehart was changing 5-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw's diaper when he apparently lost his temper and hit her in the head five times, fracturing her skull.

Lukehart dumped Gabrielle's body in a local pond and concocted a story to trick police, court records show. He told investigators that someone had kidnapped Gabrielle from his car after he'd parked it in front of a convenience store, records show.

Lukehart told police that he saw the "kidnapper" flee in a blue Bazer and that he chased them down before he got into a car accident. But police quickly became suspicious when Lukehart's story kept changing. They began conducting a widespread search for Gabrielle that included 50 officers, police dogs, a helicopter and a dive team before they say Lukehart led them to Gabrielle's body.

Lukehart later admitted to hitting the baby but testified during his trial that he loved Gabrielle and never intended to kill her.

"If only she hadn't (dirtied her diaper)," he said at trial, according to archived news reports.

Two years before he killed Gabrielle, Lukehart pleaded guilty to beating of his former girlfriend's daughter, an 8-month-old girl named Jillian. In that case, he initially told police that the girl had been drowning in the bath tub before he revived her, and that her head got hurt when he fell while holding her, according to an archived story in the Times-Union.

Jillian's grandmother told the newspaper that she was angry about the 10-month sentence that Lukehart got for hurting her granddaughter and that she always feared another child would be in danger. "I was just waiting to hear about something else," she told the Times-Union in 1996.

E. McRae Mathis, chief assistant state attorney at the time, told the newspaper that the prosecutors on Jillian's case allowed Lukehart to get a lighter sentence under a plea agreement for a number of reasons: Lukehart had no criminal history, prosecutors didn't believe Lukehart caused all the girl's injuries (her mom was charged with neglect), and because overcrowding in Florida's prisons at the time meant that inmates routinely served less than a third of their sentences. Inmates in the county jail were more likely to serve their entire sentence, Mathis told the newspaper.

"They did absolutely everything allowable under the circumstances ... to get a meaningful sentence," he said of the prosecutors on Jillian's case. "You look at these cases and never feel you get enough. They did the best they could."

Andrew Richard Lukehart is fighting execution

Lukehart has been challenging his execution, arguing that Florida's lethal injection method would amount to cruel and unusual punishment for him because of his kidney disease.

"There is a substantial and imminent risk that executing Lukehart under those procedures will very likely cause him needless pain and suffering," they argued in the Florida Supreme Court.

Florida's attorney general's office rejected those arguments.

"The simple truth is Lukehart has been living on borrowed time for decades while his victims awaited the justice they are now entitled to under our Constitution," the attorney general's office said in a filing with the Florida Supreme Court. "There is no time left for Lukehart to borrow."

The Florida Supreme Court denied Lukehart a stay of execution last week. He still has one outstanding appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court.

When is the next execution?

The next execution in the U.S. is Jeffrey Lee's in Alabama on June 11. Alabama is set to execute Lee by the relatively new nitrogen gas method for the 1998 shooting deaths of a pawn shop owner and employee.

Alabama made history when it conducted the first execution by nitrogen gas in the U.S. in January 2024. Since then, the state has used the method on six other inmates despite objections about possible suffering and arguments from some in the Jewish community that it hearkens back to Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust.

Louisiana became the second state to use the method when it executed Jesse Hoffman in March 2025.

Witness accounts from some of the Alabama executions describe "suffering, including conscious terror for several minutes, shaking, gasping, and other evidence of distress," Louisiana Chief District Judge Shelly Dick wrote in an opinion that temporarily blocked Hoffman's execution. The witnesses saw inmates "writhing" under their restraints, "vigorous convulsing and shaking for four minutes," heaving, spitting, and a "conscious struggling for life," she wrote.

A federal judge in Alabama ruled last week that the method may not be pain-free but that doesn't mean it violates inmates' constitutional rights. The ruling was the result of a lawsuit challenging the method by Lee, who is now set to become the eighth inmate to be executed by lethal gas in the U.S.

"While Lee establishes that death by nitrogen hypoxia involves some suffering, he fails to show that the protocol is cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment," U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks wrote.

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers the death penalty, cold cases and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.