Tonight, We the People of the State of Florida killed David Pittman, an intellectually disabled man. We killed a man who was broken and beaten as a child. A child his own mother described as one that no mother would want. She mercilessly beat him and told him and his siblings they were welcome to call child protective services and that, while she might go to jail for a day or two, “when they let me out, you’re going to the hospital.” Violence, neglect, and hardship shaped David’s childhood long before the State ever called him a defendant.
David had a well-documented and life-long history of intellectual disability. Neither the State of Florida nor the Courts have ever truly disputed this truth. Their purported reason for allowing this execution to proceed? Because the evidence regarding his intellectual disability wasn’t raised during the proper or procedurally appropriate time. The judge in David’s warrant proceedings just last month acknowledged that there was a real risk Florida was killing a man tonight who was lawfully ineligible for execution, and yet felt bound by current law to let it proceed. A single Florida Supreme Court Justice said the same. The other six turned a blind eye, as did the United States Supreme Court.
This is another terrifying precedent to set. When there is a legitimate and lawful basis to prohibit an execution, arbitrary and procedural rules that shift in the political winds should not be permitted to sanction that state killing. For example, if undisputed new evidence came to light today that David was under the age of 18 at the time of the crime, would the State and the Courts claim that this new evidence came too late? The answer after tonight’s state-sanctioned murder appears to be a resounding yes.
As in many death penalty cases, this tragedy has extended beyond the murders themselves. The victims and the person executed tonight were members of the same family. For decades, surviving relatives have carried not only the grief of losing loved ones but also the division and pain of navigating a system that pits them against one another over what “justice” means. For each family member who cheered David’s death tonight, there were others who shared tearful final visits with him and are now grieving the fact that the State of Florida killed someone they love in their name.
This is the 12th execution under Governor DeSantis this year, and he has already scheduled the 13th and 14th. There is zero evidence to show that this unprecedented pace of executions is keeping the people of the State of Florida any safer. Instead, we are tearing apart families and killing broken and traumatized people who should be legally exempt from execution. There is no doubt that history will reveal that this killing spree is indeed the darkest time in the Sunshine State.
###
FADP is a Florida-based, state-wide organization of individuals and groups working together to end the death penalty in Florida. Our network includes dozens of state and local groups and thousands of individual Floridians, including murder victims’ family members and other survivors of violent crime, law enforcement professionals, families of the incarcerated, and death row exonerees.