On July 14, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced the resched­ul­ing of James Duckett’s exe­cu­tion for July 28 — the same day the state is set to car­ry out the exe­cu­tion of Dominick Occhicone. If both exe­cu­tions go for­ward, it would be the first time in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty that Florida has car­ried out two exe­cu­tions in one day, and make Mr. Occhicone the old­est per­son exe­cut­ed in Florida’s mod­ern his­to­ry, break­ing the record set by Dennis Sochor’s exe­cu­tion just two weeks earlier.

James Duckett

Courtesy of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Mr. Duckett was set to be exe­cut­ed on March 31, 2026, but five days before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, the Supreme Court of Florida stayed his exe­cu­tion date pend­ing the com­ple­tion of DNA test­ing which his coun­sel argued would uncov­er evi­dence of his inno­cence. Mr. Duckett, a for­mer police offi­cer, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death by an 8 – 4 jury vote in 1988 for the rape and mur­der of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee. In no oth­er U.S. state would Mr. Duckett have been sen­tenced to death by just 8 jurors. 

Mr. Duckett, for decades, has main­tained his inno­cence and sought DNA test­ing of crime scene evi­dence, insist­ing that mod­ern foren­sic sci­ence would exon­er­ate him from caus­ing Teresa’s death. Following the court’s stay of exe­cu­tion, attor­neys for the state filed a report on the DNA test­ing indi­cat­ing results were ​“incon­clu­sive” but not­ed that ​“a qual­i­fied bioin­for­mati­cist” would be able to pro­vide more spe­cif­ic con­clu­sions. Mr. Duckett filed a motion request­ing the Florida Supreme Court main­tain the stay of exe­cu­tion, argu­ing that defense counsel’s expert would be able to fur­ther ana­lyze the test results if giv­en access to the data and sta­tis­tics. On April 2, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court ordered addi­tion­al brief­ing in Mr. Duckett’s case that would extend past the exe­cu­tion war­rant dead­line and allow it to con­sid­er whether to pro­vide defense coun­sel with the DNA data for further evaluation.

On April 30, the Court grant­ed Mr. Duckett access to the DNA data and addi­tion­al test­ing, the results of which were then reviewed by coun­sel. In June, Mr. Duckett’s expert con­clud­ed that “[t]he avail­able DNA evi­dence does not per­mit me to form an opin­ion, to a rea­son­able degree of sci­en­tif­ic cer­tain­ty, that James Duckett either is or is not a con­trib­u­tor to the evi­den­tiary DNA mix­ture. The data are insuf­fi­cient to sup­port either an inclu­sion or an exclusion.” 

Mr. Duckett asked the court for an evi­den­tiary hear­ing to dis­cuss the expert’s find­ings, which the court denied. During the test­ing, per­formed by a lab­o­ra­to­ry of the state’s choice, the bio­log­i­cal sam­ple was ful­ly con­sumed, elim­i­nat­ing any oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty for testing. 

Attorneys for the state then filed a motion request­ing the state’s high court vacate the stay of exe­cu­tion, not­ing that the ​“DNA test­ing and the sub­se­quent sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis is now com­plete.” On July 8, the Florida Supreme Court lift­ed the stay of exe­cu­tion and denied two addi­tion­al motions from Mr. Duckett. The court wrote that the stay of exe­cu­tion was lift­ed because the addi­tion­al analy­sis from Mr. Duckett’s expert did not pro­duce a result. 

Less than a week lat­er, Gov. DeSantis resched­uled Mr. Duckett’s exe­cu­tion for July 28, 2026, at noon. Just six hours lat­er, the state is sched­uled to exe­cute Mr. Occhicone. The last time Florida car­ried out two exe­cu­tions on the same day was in 1964, with the elec­tric chair exe­cu­tions of Blake Emmett and Dawson Sie. Historical prece­dent shows that mul­ti­ple exe­cu­tions on the same day in one state in the mod­ern era is rare; there have been only nine instances in which a state car­ried out two exe­cu­tions in the same day, and two instances in which a state has car­ried out three exe­cu­tions in one day.1 Gov. DeSantis’ sched­ul­ing of two exe­cu­tions in one day is con­sis­tent with his effort to increase use of the death penal­ty in the state, despite declin­ing pub­lic sup­port and juries’ rejec­tion of new death sen­tences. In the first half of 2025, four Florida juries returned rec­om­men­da­tions to impose death sen­tences, none of which were unan­i­mous deci­sions. Advocates and those opposed to these exe­cu­tions have spec­u­lat­ed that the increase in exe­cu­tions is the result of Gov. DeSantis’ polit­i­cal ambi­tion, with Floridians from Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) not­ing the gov­er­nor ​“is increas­ing­ly treat­ing exe­cu­tions as rou­tine instru­ments of political power.” 

Dominick Occhicone

Courtesy of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Attorneys for Mr. Occhicone, whose 81st birth­day is a month after his sched­uled exe­cu­tion date, have argued that his old age and poor health should pre­clude the state from exe­cut­ing him. According to court doc­u­ments filed after the issuance of his exe­cu­tion date, Mr. Occhicone has insom­nia, requires a hear­ing aid and has poor vision, has chron­ic kid­ney and heart issues, and requires the assis­tance of guards to go up and down stairs and use the show­er. Ali Shakoor, lead attor­ney for Mr. Occhicone, wrote in fil­ings, “[t]he exe­cu­tion of an octo­ge­nar­i­an is a man­i­fest­ly unjust use of the state’s pow­er” and the Pasco County Circuit “[C]ourt can and should cor­rect it.” Advocates have also raised con­cern over the unusu­al nature of Mr. Occhicone’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion. While he would be the old­est per­son exe­cut­ed in Florida’s mod­ern death penal­ty era, he would be the sec­ond old­est exe­cut­ed across the U.S. In 2018, Alabama exe­cut­ed Walter Leroy Moody Jr. at age 83. ​“This is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment and an affront to the con­science of every­one involved, said Grace Hanna, exec­u­tive direc­tor of FADP. She added that Mr. Occhicone ​“is 80 years old. He looks like he is 80 years old and has the health prob­lems of an 80-year-old.” Counsel for Mr. Occhicone added that his exe­cu­tion would ​“no longer serve[] any ret­ribu­tive val­ue based on his advanced age and would serve only the pur­pose of vengeance, offend­ing the dig­ni­ty of our society.” 

In the fil­ings, coun­sel for Mr. Occhicone also called on the judge to order a six-month pause on exe­cu­tions in Florida to allow experts to exam­ine the psy­cho­log­i­cal impact on prison staff of car­ry­ing out a high num­ber of exe­cu­tions. ​“The exe­cu­tions have tak­en a toll on the psy­che of cor­rec­tion­al staff and are caus­ing moral injury to the state,” the fil­ing explained. ​“Occhicone’s case presents the occa­sion for a pause to assess the dam­age which has been done and sur­vey the men­tal health of cor­rec­tion­al staff.” His coun­sel argues that cor­rec­tion­al staff should not have to expe­ri­ence ​“the trau­ma of car­ing for and prepar­ing for a senior cit­i­zen to die.” The judge denied counsel’s requests. 

Mr. Occhicone has been on Florida’s death row since 1987, con­vict­ed of the mur­ders of Raymond and Martha Artzner in 1986. After his penal­ty phase, where the jury found him guilty of these mur­ders, the jury made a non-unan­i­mous 7 – 5 rec­om­men­da­tion for death. Under cur­rent Florida law, a 7 – 5 rec­om­men­da­tion would no longer be suf­fi­cient to impose a death sen­tence. Today’s law requires the rec­om­men­da­tion of at least eight jurors to impose death. Mr. Occhicone sought relief from his death sen­tence after Hurst v. Florida (2016), which held that the Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact nec­es­sary to impose a death sen­tence. In October 2016, on remand, the Florida Supreme Court held that unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions were required for death sen­tences. That una­nim­i­ty require­ment was rolled back in 2023, after Gov. DeSantis called upon the leg­is­la­ture to pass a bill elim­i­nat­ing a unan­i­mous jury require­ment and replaced it with a require­ment for only eight of 12 jurors to impose death. Relief for Mr. Occhicone was denied because his sen­tence became final before 2002. The sen­tenc­ing court found, as a statu­to­ry mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor, that the mur­ders were com­mit­ted while Mr. Occhicone was under the influ­ence of extreme men­tal and emotional disturbance. 

Advocates have called on Gov. DeSantis and the Florida Board of Executive Clemency to halt the exe­cu­tions of both Mr. Duckett and Mr. Occhicone. No death-sen­tenced pris­on­er has been grant­ed clemen­cy in Florida since 1983. 

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Dan Sullivan, What to know as Pasco man, 80, could become Florida’s old­est exe­cut­ed, Tampa Bay Times, July 15, 2026; Elisabeth Gaffney, Florida to exe­cute for­mer police offi­cer, 80-year-old man on same day, 10 Tampa Bay News, July 15, 2026; Amanda Lee Myers, Florida to car­ry out dou­ble exe­cu­tion for first time in over 60 years, USA Today, July 15, 2026; Melanie Verdecia, Gov. DeSantis resched­ules James Duckett’s exe­cu­tion for July 28 — antic­i­pat­ing a new record, Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, July 14, 2026; John Pacenti, Should Florida exe­cute an 80-year-old inmate on death row?, The St. Augustine Record, July 13, 2026; Dan Sullivan, Pasco man is too old and ill to be exe­cut­ed for 1986 mur­ders, lawyers say, Tampa Bay Times, July 8, 2026; Melanie Verdecia, BREAKING: Florida Supreme Court lifts stay of James Duckett’s exe­cu­tion, Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, July 8, 2026; Melanie Verdecia, State seeks to vacate stay of James Duckett’s exe­cu­tion, Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, June 23, 2026; Melanie Verdecia, Update on James Duckett’s DNA Testing, Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, June 8, 2026; Melanie Verdecia, Florida Supreme Court grants Duckett addi­tion­al DNA test­ing, Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, May 1, 2026.