Florida | Gov. DeSantis signs death warrant for man convicted of killing Broward mom, her daughter, 4

A day after the state carried out its fifth execution of the year, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his eighth death warrant of 2026.

DeSantis on Wednesday signed the warrant for Richard Knight, 47, to be executed May 21 for the 2000 murder of Odessia Stephens and her four-year-old daughter Hanessia Mullings in Broward County.

According to court records, Knight became irate after Stephens asked him to move out of the apartment where she lived with his cousin Hans Mullings and her daughter. Hans Mullings was not home at the time. After going outside to walk, Knight returned, exchanged more words with Stephens, got a knife from the kitchen and went to the master bedroom where he began stabbing Stephens until she stopped resisting.

“He then moved on to little Hanessia, stabbing her until his knife broke and cutting his hand in the process,” court records state.

Stephens had 21 stab wounds. Mullings was stabbed four times and had bruises on her neck consistent with being strangled, records state.

Knight showered and changed but before he could clean the knives, police knocked on the door, interrupting him. Knight climbed out a window but was quickly apprehended.

He was convicted of first-degree murder in April 2006 and sentenced to death for the two murders in March 2007.

The Florida Supreme Court upheld the convictions and death sentence in 2011 and affirmed a trial court order denying his motion for postconviction relief in 2017.

The warrant was signed a day after Chadwick Willacy was put to death by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke for the 1990 murder of his Palm Bay neighbor who found him burglarizing her home.

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty on Tuesday highlighted that Willacy’s warrant was signed weeks after he requested information about the lethal injection process.

“Florida’s unique execution selection process puts sole discretion in the hands of the Governor and affords him full and complete secrecy in the selection process,” FADP stated in a release. “This authority has no checks and balances, no one to oversee the reasons behind the selection process. No one to ensure that as long as Florida continues to have a death penalty, it should at least be administered with transparency, reliability, and basic human decency.”

Last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied Willacy’s motions for a delay and a rehearing as his legal team requested public records on Florida’s lethal injection protocol and later questioned if the death warrant was signed in response to the public records request.

Next up is James Ernest Hitchcock, 69, who is scheduled to be executed April 30 for the 1976 rape and murder of his step-niece Cynthia Driggers in her bedroom in Orange County.

In DeSantis’ letter to Randall Polk, warden of the Florida State Prison, referencing the execution warrant for Knight, he referenced Hitchcock by mistake.

"Enclosed is the death warrant that I signed to carry out the sentence for James Ernest Hitchcock,” the letter states.

Last year, DeSantis signed a modern era record of 19 death warrants.

The modern era represents the time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after it was halted by a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Source: cbs12.com, NSF, April 23, 2026

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

— Oscar Wilde

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