A Florida man scheduled to die by lethal injection this evening has filed an emergency motion to halt his execution, citing a developing situation in Tennessee where a governor issued a one-year reprieve after an execution team spent an hour failing to establish required IV lines.
Richard Knight, who was convicted of the 2000 murders of Odessia Stephens and her daughter, Hanessia Mullings, faces a May 21 execution date at 6:00 p.m. ET. If carried out, it will mark the seventh execution in Florida this year and the 34th under Governor Ron DeSantis.
Moments ago, counsel for Knight filed an emergency motion for a stay of execution in the Florida Supreme Court. The legal filing follows news out of Tennessee, where Governor Bill Lee delayed the execution of 57-year-old Tony Von Carruthers for one year. Carruthers was sentenced to death after he was found guilty of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson, his mother, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker. The Associated Press previously reported there was no physical evidence linking Carruthers to the murders, and he was convicted mainly on the basis of testimony.
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The temporary reprieve in Tennessee came after officials 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 immediately establish a backup line as required by the state’s lethal injection protocol. The execution team continued to follow protocol but ultimately called off the procedure after failing to locate another suitable vein. Maria DeLiberato, an attorney for Carruthers, stated she saw Carruthers “wincing and groaning” during the hour-long process, calling it “horrible” to watch.
In light of these events, Knight’s attorneys are urging the Florida Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that Florida’s execution protocol violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The motion specifically challenges a provision in Florida’s guidelines that allows prison officials to perform an invasive “venous cutdown”—a surgical procedure used to access a vein—without local anesthesia if standard intravenous access cannot be established.
“What happened in Tennessee this morning is exactly what Richard Knight’s lawyers have warned about,” said Grace Hanna, Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP). “Instead of waiting for the worst case scenario, it is imperative that the courts or the governor step in to stop this injustice from happening twice in the same day.”
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Hanna added, “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.”
The last-minute filing builds upon two separate petitions previously sent to the U.S. Supreme Court by Knight’s defense team on Monday. The first petition challenges the constitutional validity of his death sentence, centering on the fallout from a landmark 2016 ruling, Hurst v. Florida, in which the U.S. Supreme Court 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 the Hurst decision, 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 argue this dividing line denies him equal protection under the law, pointing to a recent 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 for all affected inmates.
The second petition filed on Monday targeted the state’s execution protocol, raising the same concerns about the risks of a venous cutdown that were amplified by today’s developments in Tennessee. According to those documents, the surgical procedure carries severe risks, including catastrophic bleeding, collapsed lungs, air embolisms, and conscious paralysis if handled incorrectly, adding that the execution chamber at Florida State Prison is unequipped for surgical emergencies and operations remain “shrouded in secrecy.”
Meanwhile, a parallel dispute over forensic evidence remains active before the Florida Supreme Court. Defense filings reveal that a usable, unidentified fingerprint was recovered from the blade of a bloody knife linked to the double homicide. Trial testimony confirmed the print does not match Knight, either of the victims, or anyone else tied to the investigation.
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.” Knight’s team is demanding 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, also 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. “In a state that has more death row exonerees than any other, it’s curious that Florida is so willing to execute a man without knowing the full truth. If there’s an unidentified fingerprint on the murder weapon, the State should find out who it belongs to before carrying out an execution.”
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