A man convicted of killing two women whose bodies were found in a rural pond has become the 14th person executed in Florida this year. Seventy-two-year-old Samuel Lee Smithers was pronounced dead Tuesday evening following a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. The state's 14th execution of 2025 was a record total for Florida for a single year. Smithers was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to die for the 1996 killings of Christy Cowan and Denise Roach. Florida has scheduled two more executions this year, one later this month and another in mid-November.