Florida executed two men on Tuesday, becoming the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day. The second execution was of 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone, the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has the authority under Florida law to set execution dates, scheduled both executions hours apart earlier this month.
Occhicone was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke following a three-drug injection. His execution came nearly five hours after James Aren Duckett, 68, a former police officer convicted of raping and drowning 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in central Florida in 1987, received a lethal dose in the same death chamber. Duckett was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m. and declined to make a final statement.
Occhicone, convicted of fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend's parents in June 1986, apologized to the victims' families and his own family in his final words. He is the oldest prisoner executed in Florida since the state began modern record-keeping a century ago. Nationwide, only 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr., executed in Alabama in 2018, was older.
The executions mark the 11th and 12th carried out by Florida this year. The state has conducted more executions in 2026 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 U.S. reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
Another execution is scheduled for August. Nationwide, 19 executions have been carried out this year, with Florida accounting for 12. The last time a state carried out two executions in one day was in 2017, when Arkansas put two men to death three hours apart.
Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, with the last occurring in 1964. The U.S. Supreme Court denied last appeals from both men Tuesday. DeSantis has rarely commented on the pace of executions, previously noting some on death row had committed crimes as far back as the 1980s.
He said last year that justice delayed is justice denied. All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart.