Just hours after Tennessee’s botched execution of Tony Carruthers was called off, Florida killed Richard Knight, the state’s seventh execution this year, and the 36th state-killing under Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The 47-year-old Knight was convicted of the 2002 murder of his roommates, Odessia Stephens and her daughter, Hanessia Mullings, the girlfriend and daughter of his cousin, Hans Mullings. Court records indicate that blood on Knight’s clothing and fingerprints on knives found at the scene were tested, and these tests implicated Knight. However, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty stated on its website that, “The reality is that the State has chosen not to uncover the truth about what happened on the night they were killed. There was another person present at the crime scene, and the State fought tooth and nail to avoid spending the mere minutes necessary to run a simple fingerprint analysis that could provide clarity. Even at the very end, Florida’s courts refused to require testing that could either confirm the State’s theory or challenge it.”
Knight’s execution was the 36th in Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appears impervious to the criticism his zeal for state killing has engendered. As FADP points out, on the evening of the execution, “The machinery of death has become so routine in Florida that Governor DeSantis, who has the sole and exclusive authority over who on death row lives or dies, did not spend his evening grappling with the irreversible power he holds, or preparing to oversee his most solemn duty. He did not spend his evening maintaining an open telephone line between the execution chamber and his office, as is required by law, or prayerfully considering whether the facts of this case warrant a grant of clemency. No, as the State of Florida carried out its 36th state sanctioned murder under his administration, Gov. DeSantis was in Washington D.C. serving as the keynote speaker for an event hosted by the Federalist Society.”
As for Richard Knight, FADP reported that on the day DeSantis signed his death warrant, he wrote to a friend, “If anyone asks what I need, it’s prayers that if they kill me, I handle it with grace.”