Florida became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day on Tuesday, as the state’s death chamber at the Florida State Prison near Starke saw the deaths of two men several hours apart. The executions, which were the first back-to-back procedures in the U.S. since Arkansas in 2017, involved 68-year-old James Aren Duckett and 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone. The U.S. Supreme Court had denied final appeals for both men the previous week, and Governor Ron DeSantis, who has the authority to set execution dates, had decided earlier this month to schedule both for the same day.
James Aren Duckett, a former police officer convicted of the 1987 rape and drowning of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in central Florida, was the first to be executed. He was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m. after receiving a lethal dose of a three-drug cocktail consisting of a sedative, a paralytic, and a drug to stop the heart. Duckett declined to provide a final statement and remained unresponsive when the prison warden shook him and called his name following the procedure. Family members of the victim expressed the weight of the decades-long wait, with the victim's mother, Dorthy Tula, stating she had waited nearly 40 years for this outcome. Her cousin, Tracy Mcfall-Buskirk, remarked that Duckett had taken advantage of his position as a police officer.
Later that evening, 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone was executed, becoming the oldest inmate to be put to death in Florida since modern record-keeping began a century ago. He was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a three-drug injection that began at 6:02 p.m. Occhicone, who was convicted of the June 1986 fatal shooting of his ex-girlfriend’s parents, Raymond and Martha Artzner, offered final words before the procedure. He thanked his Christian brothers for their visits and apologized to the victims' family and his own, saying, “I know it don’t mean much, but I’m sorry. I never meant to do what I did.” Following the injection, he showed no response to the warden’s attempts to rouse him.
The children of Raymond and Martha Artzner released a statement after the execution, noting that the event brought an end to a long and painful journey. They acknowledged that while the execution did not erase the harm or the years of lost conversations and empty chairs at family gatherings, it closed a chapter that had lingered for far too long. Nationally, the only older inmate to be executed in modern history was 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr., who was put to death in Alabama in 2018.
Governor DeSantis has significantly increased the pace of executions during his final term, aiming to provide justice for families who have waited decades. While the use of the death penalty has been in decline nationwide for two decades, Florida’s recent activity has caused an uptick in the national count. To date in 2026, Florida has carried out 12 executions, which accounts for nearly half of all state executions in the U.S. this year. The total number of executions nationwide for 2026 now stands at 19. DeSantis, who oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025, has previously stated that “justice delayed is justice denied.”
The Florida Department of Corrections noted that multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, with the last such occurrence in Florida taking place in 1964. Another execution is currently scheduled in the state for August. Despite the increased frequency, the governor has rarely commented on the pace beyond noting that some inmates on death row committed their crimes as far back as the 1980s. All executions in the state continue to be carried out using the standard three-drug protocol.
