The Florida Supreme Court issued a final ruling on Monday, April 27, 2026, denying a last-minute legal challenge from death row inmate Richard Knight. The decision clears the remaining legal hurdles for Knight’s scheduled execution, which is set to take place by lethal injection on May 21 at 6:00 p.m.
Knight was convicted for the 2000 murders of Odessia Stephens and her four-year-old daughter, Hanessia Mullings.
In his recent petition for habeas corpus, Knight’s legal team argued that his death sentences were unconstitutional based on a 2024 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Erlinger v. United States. Knight contended that his jury did not make specific findings regarding the facts used to justify his death sentence, which he claimed violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
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The Florida justices rejected this argument, stating that the Erlinger case—which dealt with sentencing enhancements for repeat offenders in federal court—does not apply to Florida’s capital sentencing system.
The court noted that Knight’s jury had already found him guilty of two murders, which automatically satisfied the legal requirement of a “statutory aggravating circumstance.”
“The jury’s finding beyond a reasonable doubt of the existence of a statutory aggravating circumstance as to each murder is precisely what the Sixth Amendment requires,” the court wrote in its corrected order.
The court also pointed out that Knight had raised similar arguments in the past under different case names, such as Ring and Hurst, and that those claims had already been settled. Because the court denied the primary petition, it also dismissed Knight’s emergency motion to stay the execution, labeling it as moot.
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The ruling was nearly unanimous. Chief Justice Muñiz and Justices Labarga, Couriel, Grosshans, Francis, and Sasso concurred with the opinion. Justice Tanenbaum concurred in the result only.
The State of Florida, represented by the Attorney General’s office, had pushed for the court to deny the stay, arguing that Knight failed to present any “substantial grounds” for relief. With this ruling, the Department of Corrections is expected to proceed with the warrant signed for next month.
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