Record Twelfth Execution Set in Florida for Man Found Guilty of Murdering Relatives

A Florida man found guilty of killing his estranged wife’s sister and parents and igniting their home on fire was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday night, making the historic 12th execution in the region this year.

The inmate, sixty-three, was scheduled to receive a death by injection starting at 6pm at Florida State Prison near the town of Starke. The death warrant was signed by the state’s governor, who has approved more execution orders this year than any of his predecessors.

Pittman’s last legal challenge was denied on the previous day by the nation’s highest court. On Wednesday, he awoke at 5:45am and subsequently ate a final meal of steak, chicken, and biscuits, as stated by corrections officials. Details was provided regarding whether he received any visitors as the execution time drew near.

To date, two more lethal injections are scheduled in Florida for this fall. Victor Tony Jones is due to be executed on 30 September for the 1990 killings of two people during a theft, and another convict is scheduled for lethal injection on October 14 for the homicides of two women in 1996.

The defendant was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 on multiple charges of first-degree murder, according to court records. The jury also convicted him of intentionally setting fires and major theft.

Pittman and his wife, Marie, were undergoing a contentious divorce in May 1990 when the murders took place. Investigators reported that he had warned to harm her family multiple times.

Court statements revealed that the accused cut a phone line at the Mulberry, Florida residence of his in-laws, Clarence Knowles and his spouse, a woman in her fifties. The perpetrator stabbed the couple to death as well as their other daughter, a woman in her early twenties. He then ignited their house ablaze and stole Bonnie Knowles’s car, which he also burned. The family were discovered deceased on 15 May of that year.

A bystander during his 1991 trial identified Pittman as the individual fleeing from the burning car. A jailhouse informant also testified that the convict had admitted to the killings. Jurors recommended the death penalty on a nine to three vote.

His most recent legal petitions focused on new findings suggesting he suffers from intellectual disabilities, including an intelligence quotient in the low 70s, that was evident at the time of the killings. His lawyers contended that his lethal injection would breach the constitution’s protection against putting to death a individual with severe mental problems.

Attorneys for the government objected, arguing that it was currently not timely for Pittman to claim intellectual disability from the past. The Florida Supreme Court, overturning a earlier ruling, determined in 2020 that such claims cannot apply retroactively.

“His core intellectual disability claim is without basis. He was not cognitively impaired when he killed the three victims in 1990 or when he stood trial in 1991,” state attorneys told the federal high court.

Prior to this execution, thirty individuals have been executed in the US in 2025, with the state at the forefront due to the surge of death warrants approved by the governor. The most recent execution in the state was the 28 August execution of fifty-nine-year-old a convict, convicted of the 1992 murders of his partner, her mother, and another man.

Florida executions are administered via a three-substance injection: a calming agent, a muscle relaxant, and a chemical that stops the heart, according to the state department of corrections.