Pittman’s execution marks the 12th carried out in Florida this year – the most the state has recorded in a single year since reinstating the death penalty in 1976. His case has been closely watched
David Joseph Pittman, a man who has spent more than three decades on Florida’s Death Row, was executed Wednesday evening at Florida State Prison in Raiford. Pittman, 63, was convicted of killing a Mulberry couple and their daughter back in 1990, then setting their home ablaze in an effort to cover his tracks.
Shortly after 6pm the curtain to the execution chamber opened, Pittman spoke his final words before receiving a lethal injection.“I know you all came to watch an innocent man be murdered by the state of Florida. I am innocent. I didn’t kill anybody. That’s it,” according to Lanfranconi’s statement.
Pittman’s execution marks the 12th carried out in Florida this year – the most the state has recorded in a single year since reinstating the death penalty in 1976. His case has been closely watched, not only because of the brutality of the murders, but also because of a late-hour appeal that briefly raised the possibility of a delay.
Just days before his scheduled execution, Pittman’s attorneys petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay, arguing he should not be put to death due to intellectual disability. The high court, as is common in such cases, declined to intervene. That denial cleared the way for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signed death warrant to be carried out.
The crimes that put Pittman on Death Row shocked Polk County in the spring of 1990. Clarence and Barbara Knowles, ages 60 and 50, were found stabbed to death inside their Mulberry home, along with their 21-year-old daughter Bonnie.
Investigators said Pittman torched the house, sending flames shooting 25 feet into the night sky before stealing Bonnie’s car, which he later abandoned and set on fire as well.
A Polk County jury convicted Pittman in 1991 on three counts of first-degree murder, along with arson and grand theft, and he was sentenced to death.
His decades on Death Row have been punctuated by repeated appeals, but every one of them – including those citing claims of intellectual disability – was ultimately denied.
In the final days before the execution, advocacy groups such as Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty urged state leaders to halt Pittman’s punishment. They pointed to his childhood of extreme poverty and abuse, saying his violent upbringing shaped the path that eventually landed him on Death Row.
Still, for prosecutors, jurors and the families of the victims, the case has long stood as one of the most horrific in memory – a triple murder carried out inside the victims’ own home.
With the execution now completed, the families of Clarence, Barbara and Bonnie Knowles finally heard the man responsible speak his last words, bringing one more chapter of a decades-long legal battle to a close.
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