STARK, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man convicted of killing his estranged wife’s sister and parents and burning her home is scheduled to be killed Wednesday.
63-year-old David Pittman is due to receive a fatal injection that begins at 6pm at Florida State Jail near Stark under a death warrant signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Republican governor signed more death jail warrants this year than his predecessor.
Pittman’s final appeal was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.
So far, two more Florida executions are scheduled for this fall. Victor Tony Jones is scheduled to die on September 30th due to the murder of two people in 1990 during robbery, and Samuel Lee Smithers is scheduled to be executed on October 14th for the murder of two women in 1996.
Pittman was sentenced to death in 1991 for three counts of first-degree murder, according to court records. The ju judge also discovered that he had committed arson and grand theft.
Pittman and his wife, Marie, had experienced a controversial divorce when the murder occurred in May 1990. Investigators say he threatened to hurt her family several times.
Testimony at the trial showed Pittman hung up the phone at the homes of Clarence Knowles, 60, and 50-year-old Barbara Knowles, the parents of his wife in Mulberry, Florida. Pittman stabbed the couple to death, stabbing their other daughter, 21-year-old Bonnie Knowles. Pittman then burned their home and stole Bonnie Knowles’s car. The family was found dead on May 15th of that year.
Witnesses during the 1991 trial identified Pittman as someone who escaped from a burning car. The prison informant also testified that Pittman admitted to the murder. The ju judge recommended the death penalty by 9-3 votes.
Pittman’s latest appeal focuses on recent evidence that he suffered from intellectual disabilities, including IQ in the ’70s, which was evident at the time of the murder. His lawyers say his execution would violate the constitutional protections against killing people with serious mental problems.
State lawyers have objected, claiming that Pittman has been too late for years to claim mental disorder. The Florida Supreme Court overturned an earlier decision and found that such claims were not retroactively applicable in 2020.
“Pittman’s fundamental intellectual disability claims are worthless. When he murdered three victims in 1990, or when he went to trial in 1991, he was not an intellectually disabled person,” the state attorney told the U.S. Supreme Court.
Before Pittman, 30 people were executed in the United States in 2025, with Florida leading behind the gust of the death warrant signed by DeSantis. The final execution in Florida was the fatal injection on August 28th of Curtis Windham, 59, who was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, mother and another man in 1992.
Florida’s executions will be carried out via three-drug injections, including sedatives, paralytics and heart-stopping drugs, according to the state Department of Corrections.
