Florida executed two convicted murderers on the same day for the first time since 1964, including an 80-year-old who spent nearly four decades on death row and a former police officer who raped and drowned an 11-year-old girl.
James Duckett, 68, died by lethal injection at 1:19 p.m. Tuesday at a Florida prison. Dominick Occhicone, 80, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. the same day at Florida State Prison near Starke. Both men had exhausted their legal options hours earlier when the U.S. Supreme Court denied their final appeals and refused to stay either execution.
The back-to-back executions mark the first time any state has put two inmates to death on the same day since Arkansas did so in April 2017. Florida had not done it in more than sixty years. Occhicone was the 12th inmate executed in Florida this year, and the state has now carried out nearly half of all state executions nationwide since the beginning of 2025.
Duckett's crime remains one of the most disturbing in Florida's modern history. On the evening of May 11, 1987, he was the sole police officer on patrol in Mascotte, a small town near Orlando. Witnesses told investigators they saw 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee getting into Duckett's patrol car that night. Hours later, her mother reported her missing. The next morning, searchers found Teresa's body in a nearby lake. She had been raped and drowned.
Duckett was convicted and sentenced to death. His attorney, Mary Elizabeth Wells, said he had "consistently maintained his innocence" and criticized Florida's handling of DNA evidence in the case. But the courts were unconvinced, every appeal failed, right up to the Supreme Court's final denial on Tuesday.
Duckett was also a suspect in two other killings, a 22-year-old woman in 1986 and a 14-year-old girl in 1987, both in Polk County, though he was never charged in either case, the New York Post reported.
When the warden asked Duckett if he wanted to make a final statement, his answer was two words: "No sir." Approximately four minutes after the three-drug injection began, the warden shook him and shouted his name. He did not respond.
The death penalty remains one of the most consequential questions in American criminal law. The Supreme Court has weighed in repeatedly on its application, including a recent 5-4 split overturning a Mississippi death row conviction over jury selection disputes, a reminder that the justices remain deeply divided on how capital punishment is carried out, even when they agree it can be.
Occhicone's story is different in almost every way except the ending. On June 10, 1986, he arrived at the Holiday, Florida, home of his ex-girlfriend Anita Gerrety, who was living there with her parents, Raymond and Martha Artzner, and her two children. Gerrety refused to speak with him. Occhicone left, then came back with a handgun.
Gerrety fled the house with her daughter. Occhicone shot and killed both of her parents. His legal team argued at trial that the killings were not premeditated. The jury disagreed. He was sentenced to death and spent the next four decades on death row.
At 80 years old, Occhicone was the oldest death row inmate ever executed in Florida and the second oldest known to have been put to death in modern U.S. history. Only Walter Moody Jr., executed in Alabama in 2018 at age 83 for a 1989 mail bomb campaign that killed a federal judge and a civil rights attorney, was older.
Occhicone's lawyers mounted a final challenge arguing that executing him at his age amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment" and was therefore unconstitutional. The Supreme Court rejected that argument along with his other appeals.
Florida Department of Corrections spokesperson Jordan Kirkland said Occhicone had no visitors before his execution. He spent time with a spiritual advisor. His last meal was eggplant parmesan, salad, cornbread, and soda. He would have turned 81 the following month.
Unlike Duckett, Occhicone chose to speak. He thanked his Christian brothers for visiting him over the years. Then he offered the words that closed his life:
"I know it don't mean much, but I'm sorry. I never meant to do what I did."
The double execution fits a broader pattern. Florida has carried out executions at a pace unmatched by any other state. Fox News reported that the state has executed 19 inmates in 2025 alone, more than double the next closest state. Governor Ron DeSantis addressed the pace directly.
"I'm not, like, taking pride in that because it's a weighty thing, but to me, as we move through those and bring justice, that makes a big difference for a lot of people out there who suffered really, really serious tragedies."
DeSantis's framing, that execution is a form of justice for victims and their families, reflects a straightforward position that many Americans hold but few elected officials are willing to state plainly. The families of Raymond and Martha Artzner waited nearly forty years. Teresa McAbee's family waited thirty-eight. The question of whether killers should face the ultimate consequence is not abstract for them.
That question has surfaced in other high-profile cases across the country. Prosecutors recently sought the death penalty for the man charged in the fatal shooting of Israeli embassy staffers, and a Utah court is weighing whether to keep the death penalty on the table in the Charlie Kirk case. In each instance, the same tension plays out: how far the justice system will go to hold killers fully accountable.
Occhicone's execution also extended a streak of older inmates put to death in Florida this year. Dennis Sochor, 74, was executed earlier in the month for killing a woman he met at a New Year's Eve party in the first hours of 1982. Dusty Ray Spencer, also 74 and one week younger than Sochor, was put to death in June. Occhicone, at 80, eclipsed both by a wide margin.
In other recent cases, courts have imposed severe sentences short of death. A Minnesota man was sentenced to two life terms for killing the state House Speaker and her husband, a reminder that even in states without the death penalty, the system can still deliver punishment that matches the gravity of the crime.
Duckett said nothing. Occhicone said he was sorry. Neither statement changes what they did. One man used his badge to lure a child to her death. The other returned to a house with a gun and killed two people because a woman would not speak to him.
The legal system gave both men decades of appeals, layers of review, and every procedural protection the Constitution affords. The Supreme Court examined their claims and found no reason to intervene. Florida carried out the sentences.
Forty years is a long time to wait for accountability. The families who lived with these crimes did not choose that timeline. They just had to endure it.