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STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, putting to death an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history.
Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of the killing of a young girl.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida’s death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term, saying too many families have waited too long to see justice. The lethal injections just hours apart were the first nearly back-to-back executions since Arkansas put two men to death three hours apart in 2017.
DeSantis, who has the authority under Florida law to set execution dates, decided earlier this month to carry out both executions on the same day.
This combo from photos provided by Florida Department of Corrections shows from left, James Aren Duckett and Dominick Anthony Occhicone.
Florida Department of Corrections via AP
Nationwide, the use of the death penalty had been declining for two decades, but that number has ticked up behind the increased pace in Florida. Since 2025 began, Florida has carried out nearly half the state executions across the country.
Dominick Anthony Occhicone, the octogenarian, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke following a three-drug injection. His execution came shortly less than five hours after the ex-police officer, James Aren Duckett, 68, received a lethal dose in the same death chamber.
Occhicone, who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986, is the oldest prisoner executed in Florida’s history since modern record-keeping began a century ago. Nationwide, an older inmate, 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr., received a lethal injection in Alabama in 2018 for a wave of mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.
A former police officer was executed in the afternoon
Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Duckett became the 11th inmate executed by the state of Florida this year. He 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 and showing no response when the prison warden shook him and shouted his name minutes into his execution. He was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m.
Afterward, the girl’s family members said they had suffered for decades.
“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.
Record execution numbers for governor’s final two years
Nationwide, a total of 19 executions, including Tuesday’s, have been carried out so far this year. Florida has conducted 12 executions to date in 2026 – more than all other states combined.
DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions last year, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. in 1976.
Overall, 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 period. Another execution in Florida is set for August.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty recently urged DeSantis to halt both executions as an “unprecedented escalation” of Florida’s use of the death penalty.
“Florida continues to expand the use of capital punishment, despite mounting evidence that it is not what Floridians want,” said the group’s executive director, Grace Hanna.
Many on Florida’s death row have been there for decades
DeSantis hasn’t said why he scheduled two executions hours apart. And he has rarely commented on the pace of executions, previously noting some on death row had committed crimes as far back as the 1980s.
“Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly,” the governor said last year.
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 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, the last being in 1964.
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The U.S. Supreme Court denied last appeals from both men Tuesday and the Florida Supreme Court last week.
Duckett’s attorneys had claimed his innocence and challenged the state’s handling of DNA evidence.
Occhicone’s attorneys said age-related ailments including kidney and prostate problems could make his execution especially painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment.
All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
Associated Press reporter John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.
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