FL v. Tony Wiggins

Tony Wiggins is on trial for his life in Bartow, Florida, charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Brandon Rollins, Keven Springfield, and Damion Tillman, three friends ambushed on what was supposed to be a night-fishing trip outside Frostproof in 2020. The State is seeking the death penalty. Wiggins has pleaded not guilty, and the presumption of innocence holds through every count until a jury says otherwise.

Two other people were charged the night this case broke, and neither of them is the man standing trial. Wiggins' brother, William "Robert" Wiggins, and his girlfriend, Mary Whittemore, were each charged only with accessory after the fact to a capital felony, not murder. Both have already resolved their cases by plea: Whittemore was sentenced in 2024 to four years, and Robert Wiggins signed a plea deal expected to put him on the stand against his own brother. Only Tony Wiggins faces trial. Only Tony Wiggins faces the death penalty.

That is the tension this trial actually turns on: the State is asking twelve jurors to send a man to death, in real part, on the word of the two people closest to him, both of whom avoided that same charge by agreeing to testify. Add in Florida's 8-4 death sentencing threshold, the lowest unanimity requirement in the country, and this becomes as much a case about the machinery of Florida's death penalty as about what happened on that dirt road six years ago. We are watching both. Start with the background report below, then follow every day of trial with us.