Wade Steven Wilson was sentenced to death on August 27, 2024, for the October 2019 murders of Kristine Melton, 35, and Diane Ruiz, 43, in Cape Coral, Florida. A Lee County jury had already convicted him in June 2024 and recommended capital punishment by votes of 9-3 and 10-2. Judge Nicholas Thompson accepted that recommendation after a Spencer hearing in which the defense pointed to claimed brain injury, mental-health history, and drug use, while prosecutors argued the killings were heinous, atrocious, and cruel. Wilson stayed silent as the sentence was read. Those are the facts recorded in contemporaneous coverage of the hearing.

The legal fight did not end in that courtroom. Florida death sentences go automatically to the state Supreme Court. Wilson’s appeal was docketed as Wade Steven Wilson v. State of Florida, case SC2024-1345. His lawyers later focused less on guilt than on the 2023 statute that allows a death recommendation with eight or more juror votes instead of a unanimous verdict. They argued that because the crimes happened in 2019, applying the newer rule raised retroactivity questions. In February 2026, appellate counsel told the Florida Supreme Court he would not re-argue points the court had already upheld in other cases, and that he intended to preserve those issues for a possible peтιтion to the U.S. Supreme Court. No execution date has been set. Florida still requires a governor’s death warrant after appeals are exhausted, and the Department of Corrections has long described the typical path from sentence to execution as lasting more than a decade.

Wilson remains in state custody. After other jail-related charges were resolved with a concurrent prison term, he entered the Florida prison system. Public reporting in 2026 places him at Union Correctional Insтιтution in Raiford, a facility that houses male death-row inmates. The case has also stayed in the public eye through documentaries and streaming series, which is separate from the court record and does not change the sentence. Families of Melton and Ruiz have said they want the process to reach a final outcome. Wilson’s adoptive parents, at sentencing, asked the judge not to take their son’s life. Those competing statements still sit in the same official story: two women were killed, a jury and judge imposed death, and the appeals clock is still running.

Source: azcentral.com