Two men were scheduled to receive lethal injections six hours apart at Florida State Prison near Starke.
STARKE, FL — Florida put former police officer James Aren Duckett to death Tuesday and prepared to execute Dominick Anthony Occhicone later the same day, placing the state on course to carry out its first two executions in one day in more than six decades.
The same-day schedule marked an unusual expansion of Florida’s use of capital punishment. Duckett, 68, was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m. after a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Occhicone, 80, was scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. If the second execution proceeded, it would be Florida’s first double execution since 1964 and the first time any U.S. state had executed two people in one day since Arkansas in 2017.
Duckett was convicted of sexually assaulting and killing 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in 1987. He was working as a police officer in Mascotte, a small central Florida city, when the girl disappeared. Her body was later found in a lake. Duckett maintained his innocence through decades of appeals and declined to make a final statement before his execution.
His execution had previously been delayed to allow additional DNA testing. The testing produced results that did not conclusively identify Duckett or exclude him, according to court records and reports on the case. His attorneys sought further review, arguing that questions remained about the physical evidence. Courts rejected efforts to stop the execution.
Prosecutors relied on other evidence at Duckett’s trial, including fingerprints and testimony about his contact with McAbee before she disappeared. He was convicted of first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to death. Members of McAbee’s family said after the execution that they had waited nearly four decades for the sentence to be carried out.
Occhicone was convicted in the 1986 killings of Raymond and Martha Artzner, the parents of his former girlfriend. Prosecutors said he shot the couple at their home after making threats connected to the end of the relationship. He received a death sentence for Martha Artzner’s murder and a life sentence for Raymond Artzner’s murder.
At 80, Occhicone would become the oldest person executed in Florida’s modern death penalty era. His lawyers argued that his age and medical conditions created a risk that the lethal injection process would cause severe pain. They also challenged aspects of his death sentence and asked courts to stop the execution. The Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the death warrants setting the executions. Duckett’s warrant was reissued after the earlier delay, placing his execution on the same date already chosen for Occhicone. Florida officials did not publicly describe the operational reasons for scheduling the procedures six hours apart.
Death penalty opponents criticized the same-day schedule, saying it placed added pressure on prison personnel and reduced the time available to respond to problems during the first execution. They also raised concerns about Duckett’s innocence claim and Occhicone’s health. Supporters of the executions said the sentences had survived lengthy court reviews and provided long-delayed justice to the victims’ families.
Florida has sharply increased the pace of executions in recent years and has carried out more executions than any other state during that period. The state uses lethal injection as its primary execution method. Its protocol calls for a series of drugs intended to sedate the prisoner, cause paralysis and stop the heart.
The two cases involved crimes committed in the 1980s and prisoners who had each spent close to four decades under death sentences. Their ages and the length of their appeals reflected a broader trend of older prisoners remaining on death row as capital cases move through state and federal courts.
Duckett’s execution was completed Tuesday afternoon. Occhicone remained scheduled for execution Tuesday evening, subject to any last-minute court order or action by the governor.
Author note: Last updated July 28, 2026.