Florida executed 19 people last year and Democrats called it a political stunt.
Today they watched DeSantis do it again.
Number seven is tonight – and the man set to die deserves every second of what's coming.
What Richard Knight Did to a Little Girl Named Hanessia
Richard Knight had been living rent-free in a Coral Springs home with his cousin, his cousin's girlfriend Odessia Stephens, and their 4-year-old daughter Hanessia Mullings.
In June 2000, his cousin was at work.
Stephens told Knight he needed to move out the next morning.
Knight pulled a knife and went after her first.
Then he turned it on the child.
Hanessia Mullings was four years old.
Knight confessed the murders to a fellow inmate at Broward County Jail – who later took the stand and testified against him.
A jury convicted him on two counts of first-degree murder in 2006.
Then he spent 20 more years filing appeals.
The Florida Supreme Court rejected his final arguments last week – including a claim about an unidentified fingerprint on a knife at the crime scene.
The justices noted the evidence had been addressed at trial years ago.
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A last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court didn't stop the needle.
At 6 p.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison near Starke, Richard Knight received a lethal injection and became Florida's seventh execution of 2026.
The 26 Years Hanessia's Family Didn't Get Back
The left wants you focused on Richard Knight's rights.
Ask them about Hanessia Mullings instead.
She was four years old in June 2000 – and she died because a grown man decided that being asked to leave a house was worth killing a child over.
Her family waited six years for a verdict.
Then they waited 20 more years while Knight's lawyers worked every procedural angle a capital case allows.
DeSantis knows exactly what that wait costs families.
"Some of these crimes were committed in the '80s," he said last year. "Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly and promptly."
He meant it.
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He's carried out 28 executions since taking office – more than any Florida governor in modern history.
In 2025 alone he signed 19 death warrants – more than any state since Texas in 2009, and 40 percent of every execution carried out nationally that year.
The old Florida record was eight, set in 2014.
DeSantis nearly tripled it.
What Democrats Won't Say Out Loud
Florida House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell went in front of cameras and suggested DeSantis is just running executions to impress Republican primary voters.
Think about what she's actually arguing.
She's saying the execution of the man who stabbed a 4-year-old to death is a political prop.
She's saying Richard Knight's 20 years of appeals weren't delay enough.
She's saying Hanessia Mullings' family should have waited longer.
DeSantis has described what actually happens when families finally get their day.
"Sometimes they'll come to the office after," he said, "and you can just see, after decades, the weight that's kind of been lifted. They never fully had closure."
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That's not a campaign ad.
That's a governor who looked victims' families in the eye and decided the decades-long appeals circus was something he could actually fix.
The next execution is already scheduled.
Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, convicted of fatally beating his girlfriend's infant daughter in 1996, is set to die on June 2.
Florida has 251 people on death row.
The average time they've waited for execution is more than 22 years.
DeSantis is working through the list – and he's not asking permission from Democrats to keep going.
Sources:
- Associated Press, "Man guilty of killing a woman and her daughter is set to be Florida's 7th execution of 2026," AP, May 21, 2026.
- AP, "Florida sets up third execution in 2026 as state leads U.S. death penalty surge," NBC Miami, January 30, 2026.
- A.G. Gancarski, "Gov. DeSantis says increasing executions brings closure to victims' families," Florida Politics, November 4, 2025.
- CBS12 News, "Lenke sentencing comes as death row inmates spend 22-27 years before execution," CBS12, May 2026.
- WPTV Investigates, "Florida executes 19 people in 2025, shattering state records," WPTV, December 19, 2025.
