Florida executes Curtis Windom

Florida executes man on death row in state’s 11th execution this year

Curtis Windom, convicted over 1992 killings, put to death at Florida state prison after appeals rejected by supreme court. 

A man convicted of killing his girlfriend, her mother and a man he claimed owed him $2,000 was put to death by lethal injection on Thursday, marking a record 11th execution in the state of Florida this year.

Curtis Windom, 59, was pronounced dead at 6.17pm local time at Florida state prison near Starke, authorities said.

During Windom’s last moments alive, he ate his last meal on Thursday August 28, which consisted of ribs, baked beans, collard greens, potato salad, pie, ice cream, and a soda, as per ABC 13.

At 6.02pm, Windom was given the lethal injection. He provided his last words; however, they were unintelligible to those in the witness box. He then took several deep breaths, his chest moving and legs twitching before no more movement was seen past 6.08pm.

Windom became the 30th person executed this year in the US, with Florida leading the way behind a flurry of death warrants signed by the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. A 12th man, David Joseph Pittman, 63, is scheduled to be put to death in Florida on 17 September.

Windom, whose final appeals for a stay were rejected on Wednesday by the US supreme court, was sentenced to die for the 7 November 1992 killing of Johnnie Lee, Valerie Davis and Mary Lubin in the Orlando area.

Court records show a friend told Windom that day that Lee, who supposedly owed Windom the $2,000, had won $114 at a greyhound racetrack. Windom told the friend that “you’re gonna read about me” and that he planned to kill Lee.

Windom went to a Walmart to buy a .38-caliber revolver and a box of 50 shells, according to court testimony. Not long after that, Windom drove to find Lee, located him and shot him twice in the back from his car, followed by 2 more shots standing over the victim at close range.

Then Windom ran to Davis’s apartment and fatally shot his girlfriend “with no provocation” in front of a friend who witnessed the murder, court records show. Windom randomly shot and wounded another man before encountering Davis’s mother, Mary Lubin, as she drove to her daughter’s apartment. Lubin was shot twice in her car at a stop sign.

Windom received death sentences for the murders and a 22-year sentence for the attempted murder. Davis was the mother of one of Windom’s children, a daughter who has been campaigning to halt her father’s execution.

“We’ve all been traumatized,” the daughter, Curtisia Windom, told the Orlando Sentinel. “It hurt. It hurt a lot. Life was not easy growing up. But if we could forgive him, I don’t see why people on the street who haven’t been through our pain have a right to say he should die.”

Windom’s lawyers have filed numerous appeals over the years, including a claim that evidence of his mental problems should have been introduced at trial. But the Florida supreme court ruled that was not prejudicial against Windom because prosecutors then would have presented evidence that Windom was a drug dealer and the two women he killed were police informants.

Many of Windom’s appeals have focused on claims that he was represented by an incompetent lawyer when it came to presenting mental health evidence.

Since the US supreme court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight, in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, while Texas and South Carolina are tied for 2nd place, with 4 each.

The most recent execution in Florida took place on 19 August when Kayle Bates, 67, was put to death for the killing of a woman he abducted from a Florida Panhandle insurance office.

Florida executions are carried out using a 3-drug lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state’s department of corrections.

Windom becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Florida, and the 117th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on May 25, 1979.  Only Texas (595) and Oklahoma (129) have carried out more executions in the modern era since the July 2, 1976 US Supreme Court decision Gregg v Georgia allowed states to resume death sentencing after a 4-year moratorium.

Windom becomes the 30th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA, and the 1,637th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. The last time that at least 30 people were executed in America was in 2014, when 35 executions were carried out. There are currently 10 more executions scheduled this year in the USA; the last time the USA carried out at least 40 executions was in 2012, when 43 condemned inmates were put to death.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff; Rick Halperin, August 28, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde