Record 12th execution set in Florida this year for man convicted of killing family
Starke, Florida – – A man from Florida found guilty of having killed the sister and parents of his distant wife and set fire to their house should be put to death on Wednesday, which would be a 12th record execution in the state in 2025.
David Pittman, 63, is expected to receive a lethal injection from 6 p.m. to Florida State Prison near Starke under a death mandate signed by Governor Ron Desantis. The republican governor has signed more death mandates this year than any of his predecessors.
The final appeal of Pittman was rejected Tuesday by the Supreme Court of the United States.
So far, two other executions in Florida are planned this fall. Victor Tony Jones is expected to die on September 30 for the killings of two people in 1990 during a flight and Samuel Lee Smithers should be executed on October 14 for the murders of two women in 1996.
Pittman was sentenced and sentenced to death in 1991 for three heads of first degree murder, according to the judicial archives. The jurors also found him guilty of criminal fire and large flight.
Pittman and his wife Marie suffered a controversial divorce in May 1990, when the murders took place, and the investigators say he had threatened to harm his family several times.
The testimony has shown that Pittman had cut a telephone line in Mulberry, Florida, his wife’s parents’ house, Clarence Knowles, 60, and his wife, Barbara Knowles, 50. Pittman stabbed the death couple and their other daughter, Bonnie Knowles, 21. Pittman then set fire to their house and stole Bonnie Knowles’ car, which he also prompted. The family was found dead on May 15 of the same year.
A witness during his 1991 trial identified Pittman as the person leaking the car on fire. An informant in prison also testified that Pittman had admitted the killings. The jurors recommended the death penalty during a 9-3 vote.
Pittman’s most recent calls have focused on recent evidence indicating that he suffers from intellectual disabilities, including an IQ in the 1970s, which was apparent at the time of murders. His lawyers say that his execution would violate the protection of the constitution against the death of a person with serious mental problems.
State lawyers did not agree, saying that it is now too late for Pittman to claim mental disorders of years earlier. The Supreme Court of Florida, reversing a previous decision, judged in 2020 that such complaints could not apply retroactively.
“The underlying complaint of Pittman’s intellectual disabilities is without merit. It was not intellectually handicapped when he murdered the three victims in 1990 or when he was tried in 1991,” state lawyers told the United States Supreme Court.
Before Pittman, 30 people were executed in the United States in 2025, Florida paved the way behind the wave of death mandates signed by Desantis. The last execution in Florida was the lethal injection of August 28 of Curtis Windom, 59, found guilty of the 1992 murders of his girlfriend, his mother and another man.
Florida executions are carried out via an injection of three drugs – a sedative, a paralytic and a medication that stops the heart, according to the Correctional Services of the State.
