Florida court postpones execution of man on death row since 1975

The Florida Supreme Court has granted at least three more weeks of life to a convicted killer who has been on death row for almost four decades. Thomas Knight, who also uses the name Askari Abdullah Muhammad, was awaiting execution for kidnapping and killing a Miami couple in 1974 when he killed a corrections officer. Knight, 62, has been on Florida's death row longer than almost any other inmate. The high court ruled Monday that Knight's execution, scheduled for Dec. 4, should be delayed because of questions about the safety and effectiveness of the state's new execution drug, The Miami Herald reported. The court ordered a judge in Bradford County, where the Florida State Prison is located, to hold a hearing on the sedative midazolam hydrochloride and said the execution cannot be held earlier than Dec. 27. Florida, like other states, has been scrambling to find drugs for executions as pharmaceutical companies have increasingly barred their products from being used for the purpose. The state has already substituted midazolam hydrochloride for pentobarbitol in two executions, where it was injected before drugs designed to paralyze the condemned person and stop the heart. Knight was originally sentenced to death in 1975 for killing Sydney Gans, a Miami businessman who had hired him while he was on parole, and his wife Lillian after forcing them at gunpoint to withdraw $50,000. In 1983, he was given a third death sentence for killing Richard Burke, a guard on death row, in 1980 with a spoon sharpened into a crude knife. Knight won a new penalty hearing for the Gans killings in 1987 from a federal appeals court. In 1996, he was again sentenced to death. Last year, a federal judge ruled Knight's rights were violated in the 1996 hearing. But an appeals court disagreed and restored the death sentence. "To learn about the gridlock and inefficiency of death penalty litigation, look no further than this appeal," the court said.