Florida is scheduled to execute death row inmate Richard Knight today for the 2000 Coral Springs stabbing murders of 21‑year‑old Odessia Stephens and her 4‑year‑old daughter, Hanessia Mullings.
An appeal to the Florida Supreme Court was denied on April 27. Knight’s attorneys filed petitions with the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that his sentencing was unconstitutional and challenging Florida’s new lethal injection protocol as a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights since it allows the executioner to cut into his body without anesthesia to expose a vein if needed.
This method, called a “central venous cut-down,” is “sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering, and give[s] rise to sufficiently imminent dangers, the filing said.
The execution, Florida’s seventh in 2026, comes days after Amnesty International singled out Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis in its 2025 report on the surge in executions around the world.
Here is what Floridians should know as the execution approaches, from the crime and trial to appeals, and how the process works today.
Who is Richard Knight, and what was he convicted of?
Knight, 47, was sentenced to death for murders that court records described as “heinous, atrocious, and cruel.”
Prosecutors said that after Odessia Stephens, his cousin’s girlfriend, gave him an ultimatum to move out of their Coral Springs home, he stabbed her multiple times until she stopped defending herself, and stabbed her 4-year-old daughter, Hanessia, when she woke up.
After the knife broke during that attack, he got another knife to return to Stephens, who had crawled to the living room, according to court records. Autopsies showed that the six-weeks-pregnant woman was stabbed 21 times and had defensive wounds on both hands. The child was stabbed five times, court records show. Both showed signs of strangulation.
A Broward County jury found Knight guilty of two counts of first‑degree murder, sexual battery, and armed burglary after a trial that focused on DNA evidence and witness testimony tying him to the crime scene. The panel unanimously recommended death sentences for both murders and a judge imposed consecutive death sentences.
Who were Odessia Stephens and Hanessia Mullings?
Odessia Stephens was the girlfriend of Knight’s cousin, Hans Mullings. Knight was living with them at the time. Relatives have described her as loving and hardworking, and said she doted on her daughter Hanessia, who was 4 years old when she was killed.
During Knight’s trial and sentencing, family members spoke about the trauma of losing both a daughter and a granddaughter in a single night.
“He deserves to die for what he’s done,” Mullings said when Knight was sentenced, according to The Sun-Sentinel. “I just wish he died in a graphic way. … They suffered a lot and he won’t. … He’s just going to be put to sleep and he’s gone.”
When will Richard Knight be executed today?
Barring an intervention, the execution is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. on May 21 at Florida State Prison in Raiford.
What will happen at Richard Knight’s execution?
Condemned inmates are typically moved to a holding cell near the death chamber on the day of their execution, where they are allowed final visits and a last meal.
Witnesses from the victims’ families, news media, the state, and the inmate’s defense team are escorted into viewing rooms shortly before the scheduled time. After prison officials read the death warrant and check for any last‑minute court orders, the lethal‑injection sequence begins, and a doctor pronounces death once the process is complete.
Afterward, the Department of Corrections will release Knight’s time of death and any last words he chose to give.
Multiple appeals were denied
Knight’s case has been through multiple rounds of appeals in state and federal courts. The Florida Supreme Court and other courts have repeatedly upheld both his convictions and death sentences, rejecting claims about his trial counsel, evidentiary issues, and other alleged errors.
Knight still had an unanswered petition to the court pending from last June, but Gov. DeSantis issued a death warrant in April anyway, giving him a window of about a month to complete his appeals in the same accelerated schedule DeSantis has used since the beginning of 2025.
After the warrant, Knight’s attorneys filed new appeals challenging his death sentence and Florida’s lethal‑injection protocol, while advocacy groups urged DeSantis and the courts to halt the execution and commute his sentence to life. The Florida Supreme Court denied both his nearly year-old petition and a new request for an emergency stay of execution on the same day, April 27.
Knight’s team filed an application for a stay of execution to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, arguing that his death sentence was unconstitutional because Florida ignored a 2016 Supreme Court ruling against the state’s capital sentencing system, which allowed judges, instead of juries, to determine if a defendant was eligible for the death penalty.
The application said Florida arbitrarily chose to only resentence cases sentenced after 2002, which excluded Knight.
A separate filing claimed Florida’s new lethal injection protocol permitted executioners to cut into inmates without anesthesia to place an IV when normal injections were not possible.
What are supporters and opponents saying?
Opponents of the death penalty, including groups such as Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Catholic Mobilizing Network, have called on DeSantis to halt Knight’s execution due to concerns over untested DNA evidence, the state’s recent rapid pace of executions, possible issues with the state’s use of lethal‑injection drugs, and the alleged unconstitutionality of Knight’s original sentencing.
“Florida cannot continue picking and choosing who receives constitutional protections and who does not,” said Grace Hanna, Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) in an email. “If a sentencing scheme was unconstitutional for some people, it was unconstitutional for everyone sentenced under it – including Richard Knight.”
State officials and prosecutors have emphasized that Knight was convicted of a brutal double murder and that multiple courts have affirmed his conviction and death sentences over many years of review.
C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida’s service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday day by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: What to know as Florida executes child killer Richard Knight today
Reporting by C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
