Florida executes man 26 years after murders of mother, daughter in Coral Springs
After two decades on death row in Florida, Richard Knight has been executed.
Knight, 47, was convicted of stabbing his cousin’s girlfriend and the couple’s 4-year-old daughter at their Coral Springs apartment in June 2000.
He was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of Odessia Stephens, 24, and her daughter, Hanessia Mullings, and sentenced to death in 2006.
According to the Associated Press, the death chamber curtain at the state prison in Raiford went up at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 21. Knight was already strapped in place with an IV line inserted.
Knight’s final statement: “I want to give thanks to Yahweh, who is the most high,” the AP reported.
Executioners then administered the three-drug execution cocktail, containing a sedative, paralytic, and potassium acetate, which stops the heart. Knight was declared dead at 6:13 p.m.
He was the seventh person executed in the state this year, following a series of unsuccessful appeals that went to the Florida Supreme Court.
This came shortly after Tennessee’s botched execution of Tony Carruthers after prison staff were unable to establish a backup IV line despite making multiple deep incisions into Carruthers’ limbs, neck and chest. Carruthers was given a one-year reprieve.
Florida is on track to meet or surpass the record-setting number of executions (19) performed in the state last year, despite having the highest number of death row exonorees in the nation.
