TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In what would be Florida’s fourth execution this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a death warrant for a man who in 1998 murdered his girlfriend and her three children in Okaloosa County.
DeSantis issued the warrant Monday for Jeffrey Hutchinson, who received three death sentences and one life sentence after being convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Renee Flaherty, and her children, Geoffrey, Amanda and Logan Flaherty, according to documents posted Tuesday on the Florida Supreme Court website.
The execution is scheduled May 1 at Florida State Prison, with the warrant likely touching off a legal fight in the coming weeks about whether Hutchinson should be put to death. The state this year executed James Ford on Feb. 13 and Edward James on March 20 and is scheduled to execute Michael Tanzi on April 8.
A 2001 sentencing order included in the documents posted Tuesday said Hutchinson lived with Renee Flaherty and the children in Crestview. The couple had an argument on Sept. 11, 1998, causing Hutchinson to pack his belongings in a pickup truck and leave the home, according to the sentencing order signed by Circuit Judge G. Robert Barron.
After going to an AMVETS bar, where he drank beer, Hutchinson went back to the home and used a 12-gauge shotgun to kill Renee Flaherty, 7-year-old Amanda Flaherty and 4-year-old Logan Flaherty in a master bedroom, the judge wrote in the order. Hutchinson then fired two shots to kill 9-year-old Geoffrey Flaherty, who stood in a doorway of the bedroom.
The death sentences were imposed in the children’s murders.
The sentencing order said Hutchinson, now 62, is an Army veteran who served in the Gulf War. He had been diagnosed with a condition that affects veterans known as Gulf War Illness, but the judge wrote that there had been “no correlation between the murders of these victims and the defendant’s diagnosis of Gulf War Illness established.”
A letter dated Monday from Attorney General James Uthmeier to DeSantis outlined a series of appeals filed over the years on behalf of Hutchinson. Courts rejected the appeals.
The Hutchinson death warrant came as the Florida Supreme Court considered arguments about whether Tanzi’s execution should proceed next week. As of Tuesday morning, the court had not ruled. Tanzi was convicted in the 2000 murder in Monroe County of a woman he kidnapped in Miami.
The four executions carried out or scheduled this year came after Florida executed one inmate in 2024. Florida did not execute any inmates in 2020, 2021 and 2022 but put to death six men in 2023.
Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
©2025 Cox Media Group
