Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant Friday for Samuel Lee Smithers, scheduling the 72-year-old's execution by lethal injection Oct. 14 at Florida State Prison and extending a record pace of executions in the state this year.
Smithers was convicted in the 1996 killings of two women whose bodies were found in a rural pond in Plant City, Florida. Court records show he met Christy Cowan and Denise Roach on separate occasions at a Tampa motel to pay them for sex. He was working as a landscape maintenance worker on a 27-acre property that included three ponds on which the victims’ bodies were later discovered.
According to the court record, on May 28, 1996, property owner Marion Whitehurst — who had met Smithers at church where he served as a Baptist deacon — found Smithers cleaning an axe in the carport and noticed a pool of blood. A sheriff's deputy who later responded to the property saw drag marks leading to one of the ponds, where both Cowan and Roach were recovered. Both victims had been severely beaten, strangled and left in the pond, the record states. Smithers confessed to the killings and was sentenced to death after a 1999 trial. The Florida Supreme Court has upheld his convictions and sentences.
Smithers would be the 14th person set for execution in Florida in 2025, a tally that surpasses any other Florida governor since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. So far in 2025, 30 people have been executed nationwide, with Florida accounting for a significant share amid a string of death warrants signed by DeSantis. The previous state record for executions in a single year was eight, most recently recorded in 2014.
DeSantis signed the Smithers warrant a few days before the scheduled execution Wednesday of David Joseph Pittman. Another convicted killer, Victor Tony Jones, is set for execution Sept. 30. Florida’s most recent execution occurred Aug. 28, when Curtis Windom, convicted in 1992 murders, was put to death by lethal injection.
Florida corrections officials did not immediately provide additional comment on the scheduling. Smithers’ attorneys have previously pursued appeals and collateral challenges in state and federal courts, and the case has been the subject of multiple post-conviction reviews that the courts have rejected, according to court records.
The accelerated schedule of executions in Florida this year has drawn national attention as the state positions itself at the forefront of U.S. capital punishment activity. Death penalty cases in Florida routinely involve protracted legal processes, including direct appeals, state post-conviction petitions and federal habeas corpus reviews. In Smithers’ case, those procedures culminated in the 1999 conviction and subsequent upholding of the sentence by Florida’s highest court.
The lethal injection is scheduled to take place at Florida State Prison. State officials have not released a detailed timeline for the execution beyond the Oct. 14 date, and any further stays or court interventions would be handled through the state and federal judiciary. The scheduling adds to a year of uncommon frequency in executions in a state that has seen a steady debate over capital punishment policy and process.