After months of legal maneuvering and procedural delays, Gov. Ron DeSantis has re-scheduled the execution of death row inmate James Duckett — a former Mascotte police officer who pushed for what turned out to be inconclusive DNA tests of evidence earlier this year.
And in an unconventional move, Duckett’s lethal injection has been scheduled on the same day Florida is already set to execute another convicted killer.
If both executions are carried out on July 28, it would be the first time in Florida’s modern history that two executions take place on the same day.
Duckett, 68, was convicted in 1988 of raping and killing 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in Lake County but has always claimed he is innocent.
In a statement Wednesday, Duckett’s legal team said it was “disappointed by the Governor’s decision” and said their client now faces death “without the full truth ever being revealed.”
“It is particularly shameful that the Governor chose a date just two weeks away and set the execution on the very same day as the already scheduled execution of Dominick Occhicone,” said the statement from his lead attorney, Mary Elizabeth Wells.
DeSantis originally signed Duckett’s death warrant on Feb. 27. But the Florida Supreme Court stayed the execution on March 26 to allow for DNA testing and analysis of those tests as requested by his attorneys.
But the tests on semen and hair samples taken from the girl’s underwear did not show with “a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that James Duckett either is or is not a contributor to the evidentiary DNA mixture,” said Dr. David Mittleman of Othram Inc., a private lab that conducted the tests, in his report to the court.
The state high court then lifted its stay on Duckett’s execution on July 8, allowing DeSantis to re-issue a death warrant.
Duckett’s attorneys asked for an evidentiary hearing to probe the DNA analysis further, but a circuit court judge in Lake — who is overseeing the case — denied the request.
A day later, Duckett’s attorneys filed another request for a hearing, accusing the state of destroying a critical slide of DNA evidence and violating Duckett’s right to due process.
A status hearing was scheduled earlier this week for 3 p.m. Wednesday before Circuit Court Judge Brian Welke in Tavares. But Welke ordered the hearing canceled a few hours before the event.
“The Court finds there is no necessity for further hearings,” Welke said in his order.
Duckett’s legal team continues to argue that better testing and analysis of the data might reveal more information about the crime.
“The inconclusive test results are a direct consequence of the State’s decision,” according to its statement. “They chose the laboratory, chose the testing method, and chose the expediency over the truth of what happened to Teresa McAbee.”
In a letter to Florida’s prison in Raiford, DeSantis has ordered that Duckett’s execution take place between noon, July 28, and noon, Aug. 4.
Randall Polk — warden of the state prison in Raiford, where Duckett is being held — notified DeSantis that he has set the execution for noon, July 28.
That’s six hours before the execution scheduled for Dominick Occhione, who was sentenced to death in 1987 for the murders of his former girlfriend’s parents in Pasco County.
Occhione is 80 years old. His attorneys and death penalty opponents argue that executing Occhione given his age and deteriorating health would violate the Constitution’s prohibitions for cruel and unusual punishment.
In the Duckett case, Teresa told her mom that she needed to buy more pencils to complete her fifth-grade math homework the night of May 11, 1987 and walked to a nearby convenience store on State Road 50 in Mascotte.
Duckett, who was on patrol for the small Lake County town, was seen parking his patrol car and then talking to the girl outside the convenience store about a curfew, after she walked out with a boy.
A witness testified that the girl got into the patrol car with Duckett, but others have said they saw her walk back to her home, less than a mile away. Her body was found the next morning floating near the shore of a small nearby lake. She had been raped and drowned.
On Tuesday, Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners, 74-year-old Dennis Sochor, for the rape and murder of Patricia Gifford on Jan. 1, 1982, soon after he met her at a New Year’s Eve party.
It was Florida’s 10th execution this year.