Authorities in Florida executed two inmates convicted in two murder cases on Tuesday, in the first double execution in the state since 1964, and amid record state figures, with 19 executions by lethal injection in 2025 and 12 so far this year.
Former police officer James Duckett, 68, received the maximum sentence at 1:19 local time at the Florida State Prison, in Raiford, in the north of the state, and Dominick Occhicone, 80, at 6:13 p.m. local time at the same place.
The last time the state carried out two executions on the same day was in 1964, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
Duckett, convicted of the 1987 kidnapping, rape and murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee, and Occhicone, convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents in 1986, exhausted legal avenues in the state, as the Florida Supreme Court rejected appeals in both cases.
In March, that same court had stopped Duckett's execution to review DNA evidence that his defense believed could exonerate him, but an independent expert in June described it as inconclusive, neither to incriminate him nor to free him.
For his part, Occhicone suffered from kidney and heart failure and severe hearing and vision loss, according to his defense, who unsuccessfully argued that executing him in that state and at his advanced age represented cruel punishment, prohibited by the Constitution. Furthermore, his lawyers recalled that the jury that convicted him was not unanimous (seven votes to five).
Occhicone became the oldest prisoner executed in Florida and the second in the United States, only behind Walter Moody, executed at age 83 in the state of Alabama in 2018.
The lawyers of both went to a federal court in northern Florida last Friday the 24th with a joint lawsuit, alleging that two executions on the same day multiply the risk of failures and that subjecting prison officials to this process in six hours causes them unacceptable moral damage.
However, a judge ruled against it, and only requests to stay the executions were pending before the United States Supreme Court, which were also unsuccessful.
With these executions, Florida completes 31 since January 2025 and the US 66, which means that this state accounts for nearly half of the national total, according to the DPIC.
The organization Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) accused the courts of protecting the state from any serious investigation into its way of executing and denounced that Florida kills more criminals this year than all other states combined.
