🔗 Share this article

A Florida man convicted of murdering his estranged wife’s sister and parents and igniting their residence on fire was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday night, marking the record twelfth lethal injection in the state this year.

The inmate, sixty-three, was scheduled to undergo a lethal injection beginning at 6pm at a state correctional facility near Starke. The death warrant was signed by the state’s governor, who has approved a greater number of execution orders this 2025 than any of his predecessors.

His last legal challenge was rejected on Tuesday by the US Supreme Court. On Wednesday, he awoke at 5:45 AM and subsequently ate a final meal of steak, chicken, and biscuits, according to prison authorities. Details was released regarding if he received any visitors as the scheduled time drew near.

So far, an additional two executions are scheduled in Florida for the upcoming autumn. One inmate is set to be put to death on September 30 for the 1990 killings of two individuals during a robbery, and another convict is slated for lethal injection on 14 October for the murders of two females in the mid-1990s.

Pittman was found guilty and sentenced to capital punishment in 1991 on multiple charges of premeditated homicide, according to court records. Jurors also found him guilty of arson and major theft.

Pittman and his spouse, Marie, were going through a acrimonious separation in spring 1990 when the killings occurred. Investigators stated that he had warned to harm her family on several occasions.

Trial testimony showed that the accused cut a telephone cable at the Florida-based home of his in-laws, a sixty-year-old man and his wife, 50-year-old Barbara Knowles. The perpetrator stabbed the pair to death as well as their other daughter, a woman in her early twenties. He then set their house ablaze and took the victim’s vehicle, which he also burned. The family were found dead on May 15 of that 1990.

A bystander during his 1991 trial recognized the defendant as the person fleeing from the vehicle on fire. A jailhouse informant also stated that Pittman had admitted to the killings. The jury suggested the capital punishment on a nine to three decision.

Pittman’s most recent legal petitions centered on recent evidence suggesting he suffers from cognitive impairments, including an IQ in the seventies range, that was evident at the moment of the killings. His attorneys argued that his execution would violate the legal protection against executing a person with severe mental problems.

Attorneys for the government objected, arguing that it was currently too late for Pittman to claim intellectual disability from years earlier. The state’s highest court, overturning a previous decision, ruled in 2020 that such arguments cannot apply retroactively.

“His underlying intellectual disability claim is without basis. He was not cognitively impaired when he murdered the three victims in 1990 or when he stood trial in 1991,” state attorneys informed the federal high court.

Prior to Pittman, 30 people have been put to death in the US in 2025, with Florida leading due to the surge of death warrants signed by the governor. The last lethal injection in the state was the August 28 death of fifty-nine-year-old a convict, convicted of the 1992 homicides of his partner, her mother, and another man.

Florida executions are administered via a three-substance cocktail: a calming agent, a muscle relaxant, and a drug that halts the heartbeat, as per the state department of corrections.