STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A former police officer convicted of the on-duty rape and murder of a young girl was put to death Tuesday, the first of two lethal injections planned for a single day in Florida, hours before an 80-year-old man was to become the second-oldest inmate executed in modern U.S. history.
It has been nearly a decade since any state carried out two executions in a one day, when Arkansas had back-to-back executions in 2017.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has stepped up executions over the past 18 months at a pace unseen in the state since 1976 when the U.S. reinstated the death penalty, making Florida's death chamber the nation's busiest.
Since the beginning of 2025, Florida has carried out nearly half the state executions nationwide.
James Aren Duckett, 68, was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. The 11th inmate executed by the state this year, Duckett was convicted of raping and drowning 11-year-old Teresa McAbee while he was working as a police officer in central Florida in 1987.
Duckett declined to make a final statement, responding “no sir” when asked. About 4 minutes after the execution began, the prison's warden shook Duckett and shouted his name, but there was no response.
Afterward, the girl's family members said they suffered for decades waiting for this day.
“I waited nearly 40 years to have him dead,” Dorthy Tula, the victim's mother, said before breaking down.
“This man took advantage of his badge,” said Tracy Mcfall-Buskirk, the girl's cousin.
Later Tuesday, 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone was scheduled to become the oldest prisoner executed in Florida’s modern history starting at 6 p.m. He was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986.
Florida execution came after last-minute appeals
Until Tuesday, a total of 17 executions had been carried out in the U.S. so far this year, with Florida leading the way with more executions than all other states combined.
Both men had made last-ditch appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, and last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied appeals by both men to intervene.
Duckett’s attorneys had unsuccessfully claimed Duckett’s innocence and argued the state’s handling of the DNA evidence is the reason for the inconclusive results.
Occhicone’s attorneys had argued that several age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, could make his execution especially painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment.
DeSantis hasn’t said why he scheduled two executions six hours apart. A Florida prison official said Tuesday morning that the department was confident in its readiness to carry out both executions. All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
Record execution numbers for governor’s final two years
DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. in 1976. The previous high was eight executions set in 2014.
Florida now has executed 30 people since the beginning of 2025 while the rest of the U.S. states combined have carried out 35 executions over the same time frame.
If the day’s final execution is carried out Tuesday evening, that would bring total executions for DeSantis’ final two years in office to 31 overall, compared to just nine during his first six years in office. Another execution is set for August.
Before Florida, Arkansas last executed two inmates on the same day by lethal injection three hours apart in April 2017. And Texas executed two convicted killers on the same day in 2000, the year the state executed 40 prisoners.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty urged DeSantis ahead of Tuesday to halt both executions.
“July 28 represents an unprecedented escalation of Florida’s use of the death penalty,” the group’s executive director, Grace Hanna, said in a statement. “These are two profoundly different cases, but they point to the same troubling reality: Florida continues to expand the use of capital punishment, despite mounting evidence that it is not what Floridians want.”
Decades on death row
DeSantis has rarely commented on the pace of executions, but previously said his goal is to bring justice to victims’ families who have waited decades.
“Some of these crimes were committed in the ’80s,” the governor said last year. “Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly.”
If his execution proceeds as planned, Occhicone would become the second-oldest prisoner known to be put to death in modern U.S. history after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr. was executed in Alabama in 2018 for a wave of mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.
Florida executions were scheduled for the same day only weeks ago
Just before Duckett was scheduled to be executed in March, the Florida Supreme Court issued a stay to allow for DNA testing of old evidence. The results were inconclusive, meaning they did not exonerate Duckett or definitively connect him to the crime. Judges have allowed the jury verdict to stand.
When Occhicone’s death warrant was signed late last month, his was the only execution scheduled for Tuesday. But after the Florida Supreme Court removed Duckett’s stay on July 8, DeSantis signed a new death warrant and added Duckett to Occhicone’s execution date. Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, with the last being on May 12, 1964.
