Officials in Florida on Tuesday took the ‘incredibly rare’ step of executing two separate death row inmates, a former cop and an 80-year-old man, in a single day.
James Duckett, 68, and Dominick Occhione, 80, were put to death by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison near Starke just hours apart, becoming the 11th and 12th prisoners executed in the state this year alone.
Both men had been convicted of murders dating back to the late 1980s – Duckett was found guilty in the 1987 murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee while Occhione was convicted of the murder of his former fiancée’s parents.
Duckett, a former police officer who has long maintained his innocence, was the first to be put to death on Tuesday after enjoying a last meal of eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits and chocolate milk, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
He had no last words before officials injected him with a lethal cocktail, and was pronounced dead at 1.19pm.
Five hours later, Occhione apologized to the victims of his crimes before he shut his eyes and was pronounced dead at 6.13pm – becoming the oldest known prisoner executed in Florida since it began modern record-keeping a century ago.
The two men’s deaths on Tuesday also marked the first nearly back-to-back executions since Arkansas put two men to death three hours apart in 2017.
‘Two executions in a day is incredibly rare,’ Robin Maher, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told The Guardian.
James Duckett, 68, and Dominick Occhione, 80, were put to death by lethal injection
They were executed at the Florida State Prison near Starke on Tuesday
But Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has made Florida’s death chamber the nation’s busiest as he argued too many families have waited too long to see justice.
DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record of 19 executions last year, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the US reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
Nationwide, a total of 19 executions including Tuesday’s have been carried out this year. Florida leads with 12 executions to date in 2026 – more than all other states combined.
Another execution in Florida is set for August.
‘DeSantis has been setting execution dates roughly every two weeks, which is an extraordinary pace,’ Maher said.
The Florida governor has not said why he decided to execute both Duckett and Occhione on the same day.
And he’s 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.
Families of Duckett and Occhione’s victims echoed that sentiment on Tuesday.
‘I waited nearly 40 years to have him dead,’ Dorthy Tula, Teresa McAbee’s mother said before breaking down in tears.
‘This man took advantage of his badge,’ added Tracy Mcfall-Buskirk, the girl’s cousin.
Duckett was found guilty in the 1987 murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee (pictured with her mother)
Occhione was convicted of the murder of his former fiancée’s parents, Raymond and Martha Artzner, in 1986
McAbee vanished from the small town of Mascotte on May 11, 1987.
She had left her home late that night to walk to a Circle K store nearby to buy a pencil to do her math homework.
Duckett, one of the small town’s only two police officers, then saw McAbee talking to an older boy outside the store and warned the two children that they were out past curfew.
The boy then left with his uncle, while Duckett placed the girl in his patrol car.
He later claimed he had just lectured her about being out late before letting her go, but McAbee’s mother later reported her missing – and the young girl’s body was found the next morning in a lake less than a mile away from the store.
An autopsy later determined she had been raped, strangled and drowned.
Suspicion soon fell on Duckett, and at trial, an FBI analyst testified that a hair on McAbee’s underwear was nearly identical to Duckett’s – though another expert could not make a match.
A jailhouse informant also claimed she had been near the Circle K and saw Duckett drive off with McAbee.
A jury then found Duckett guilty of the girl’s murder and voted to recommend the death penalty 8–4.
However, the FBI hair analyst was later discredited after he was found to have given false information and misleading testimony in other cases, and the jailhouse informant who testified in Duckett’s trial later recanted her statement.
Dorthy Tula, Teresa McAbee’s mother, said she had waited 40 years for Duckett’s execution
For years afterward, Duckett sought DNA testing – but the science was not advanced enough until recent years.
He once again petitioned for DNA testing after DeSantis signed his death warrant earlier this year, but the tests came back inconclusive and the Florida Supreme Court denied a stay of execution.
Then, with just hours to go before his scheduled death on Tuesday, Duckett’s lawyers filed a last-minute appeal with the US Supreme Court to allow several items of clothing McAbee was wearing on the night of her death in May 1987 to be tested for DNA, along with vaginal swabs and scrapings from under her fingernails, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
‘It’s of no import to the State of Florida that they will execute an innocent man, so long as the proceedings keep their convictions in tact,’ attorney Elizabeth Wells wrote in the brief.
But Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas denied the appeal without comment, clearing the way for Duckett’s execution.
Those in attendance at Duckett’s execution included relatives of Jeanifer Weldon, a 15-year-old Polk County girl whose unsolved murder has long been tied to the one-time police officer
When he was then strapped to a gurney and put to death, a spiritual adviser sat next to him reading aloud from a prayer book.
Duckett was then seen breathing heavily and apparently convulsing before going still. About four minutes later, a prison official shook his shoulders and shouted his name, getting no response, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Thirty-five people watched the execution Tuesday afternoon, including relatives of Jeanifer Weldon, a 15-year-old Polk County girl whose unsolved murder has long been tied to the one-time police officer though he was never charged in connection with that case.
Her family members said afterward that the execution gave them some closure.
Bill Gladson, a state attorney whose office prosecuted Duckett, also said in a statement that the evidence in McAbee’s case left no doubt about his guilt.
‘While no legal proceeding can restore the life that was taken, this execution represents the final administration of justice for the young victim and her family, who have endured years of unimaginable loss while waiting for this case to reach its lawful conclusion,’ he said.
Protesters gathered across from the Florida State Prison to protest the double executions
The Rev. Fred Ruse, of Orlando, prayed with the protesters
Hours later, Occhione was strapped to a gurney while a spiritual advisor, clutching a rosary, prayed at his side.
In his final statement, the 80-year-old said he was sorry to the victims ‘for the hurt I caused them.
‘I know it don’t mean much, but I’m sorry,’ Occhione said after enjoying a final meal of eggplant parmesan, a salad, garlic bread and a Pepsi.
‘I never meant to do what I did,’ he insisted.
The injection began at 6.02pm followed by several minutes of deep breathing. When the breathing slowed, a warden shook him and yelled his name without response and he was pronounced dead at 6.13pm.
Occhione had been convicted in the 1986 murders of Raymond and Martha Artzner. He had been engaged to marry their daughter, Anita Gerrety, but she had told him she was leaving him.
At Shooter’s Lounge in Elfers, where Occhione would regularly drink between 10 to 15 vodka cocktails before lunchtime, people said they heard him lamenting the death of his relationship and voicing hostility toward the Artzners and Gerrety.
She would later testify that Occhione had threatened to kill her and her family.
‘He would hurt whatever I loved the most. And he specifically mentioned my parents and my children, and how he was going to blow them away, starting especially with my children, starting with the kneecaps, and leave me so I could watch them and suffer.’
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has made Florida’s death chamber the nation’s busiest as he argued too many families have waited too long to see justice
Authorities said Occhione then showed up to the home Gerrety shared with her parents in the early morning hours of June 10, 1986.
Gerrety had told him to go away and threatened to call the police, but Occhione later returned with a gun and disabled the home’s phone line before banging at the doors and windows.
When Raymond Artzner then came outside, wielding a broomstick and telling Occhione to leave, Gerrety said he looked at her and grinned before she saw a ‘flash of fire’ and her father fall to the ground.
As Gerrety and her daughter then fled the scene, Occhione broke into the home through a locked door and shot Martha Artzner four times.
At his trial, Occhione’s lawyers argued that his alcohol abuse and distraught mental state made him incapable of forming an intent to kill.
But a jury voted 7–5 for him to get the death penalty, though Florida law now requires a minimum of eight votes for the death penalty to be imposed.
Following his death on Tuesday, Artzners’ children released a statement saying their family had come to ‘the end of a long and painful journey.’
‘The years since June 10, 1986, have been filled with sleepless nights, empty chairs at family gatherings, and those one-on-one conversations that were lost,’ it read in part.
‘Today does not erase that pain and it does not undo the harm, but it does close a door and end a chapter in our lives that has just lingered on far too long.’
