Florida authorities have executed a death row inmate by lethal injection for the 2000 stabbing deaths of a pregnant woman and her 4-year-old daughter, carrying out the sentence after the state’s highest court rejected multiple last-minute appeals.
Richard Knight, 47, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. ET on Thursday, May 21, at Florida State Prison. He was convicted of the murders of Odessia Stephens and her daughter, Hanessia Mullings, in their Coral Springs home. The execution marks the seventh in Florida this year and the 34th under Governor Ron DeSantis.
The execution proceeded after the Florida Supreme Court rejected final arguments from Knight’s defense team. Up until the final hours, Knight’s attorneys had argued for a delay to allow automated testing on a usable, unidentified fingerprint recovered from the blade of a bloody knife linked to the double homicide. Trial testimony established that the print did not match Knight, either of the victims, or anyone else tied to the investigation.
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While the prosecution relied on a combination of DNA, bloodstains, and weapons to secure the original conviction, state prosecutors recently acknowledged in court that there was “no testimony of when any of the bloodstains or any of the prints were made.” Defense lawyers had requested that the Broward Sheriff’s Office run the mystery print through the national Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) to check for alternative suspects.
Herman Lindsey, executive director of Witness to Innocence and Florida’s 23rd death row exoneree, had questioned the state’s push to proceed under a cloud of forensic uncertainty. “I was sentenced to death by the same judge, in the same courtroom, as Richard Knight. I was later exonerated, so I know what can happen when the system ignores evidence,” Lindsey said. “If there’s an unidentified fingerprint on the murder weapon, the State should find out who it belongs to before carrying out an execution.”
Knight’s legal team also filed a series of emergency motions challenging Florida’s lethal injection guidelines, arguing that the protocol allows unqualified execution team members to perform an invasive surgical technique to access veins without local anesthesia. The litigation escalated sharply on Thursday morning following a development in Tennessee, where Governor Bill Lee issued a one-year reprieve for death row inmate Tony Von Carruthers, 57.
The Tennessee execution was called off after executioners spent one hour attempting to secure intravenous access. According to the Tennessee Department of Correction, medical personnel quickly established a primary IV line but could not establish the required backup line. Maria DeLiberato, an attorney for Carruthers, stated she saw Carruthers “wincing and groaning” during the hour-long process, calling it “horrible” to watch. Carruthers was sentenced to death for the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker, though the Associated Press previously reported there was no physical evidence linking him to the crimes.
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In an emergency motion filed in light of the Tennessee incident, Knight’s lawyers argued that Florida’s provision allowing a “venous cutdown” by prison staff carried severe risks of catastrophic bleeding, collapsed lungs, air embolisms, and conscious paralysis.
“What happened in Tennessee this morning is exactly what Richard Knight’s lawyers have warned about,” Grace Hanna, Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP), said prior to the execution. “Despite the State’s facade, lethal injection is not a medical procedure. Allowing untrained prison staff to perform surgery on a living, breathing person without anesthesia is not justice. It is torture.”
In addition to the protocol and forensic challenges, Knight’s defense team had filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of his death sentence. That appeal centered on the fallout from the landmark 2016 ruling, Hurst v. Florida, which struck down Florida’s capital sentencing system because it allowed judges, rather than juries, to find the facts necessary to impose a death sentence.
Following Hurst, Florida courts established a cutoff date based on a 2002 legal milestone. Defendants whose sentences became final after 2002 were granted new sentencing hearings, while those whose cases concluded before that year were denied relief, despite being sentenced under the exact same framework. Knight’s attorneys argued this dividing line denied him equal protection under the law, pointing to the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court case Erlinger v. United States as a sign that the nation’s highest court may be ready to enforce its constitutional rulings retroactively.
“Florida cannot continue picking and choosing who receives constitutional protections and who does not,” Hanna said. “If a sentencing scheme was unconstitutional for some people, it was unconstitutional for everyone sentenced under it – including Richard Knight.”
The Florida Supreme Court ultimately denied the defense’s final motions regarding the execution protocol and fingerprint testing, allowing the department of corrections to proceed with the scheduled timing.
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