Florida plans to put two men to death Tuesday for a pair of separate murder cases from the 1980s.
James Duckett and Dominick Occhicone are set to become the 11th and 12th prisoners Florida has executed this year, which will also mark the first time in modern history that the state has put two people to death on the same day.
Their executions come amid a record-breaking surge in capital punishment in Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis since last year has ordered more than 30 men to die.
If Duckett and Occhicone are put to death as scheduled, DeSantis will have authorized 40 executions throughout his time as governor, far more than any of his predecessors.
Duckett, a former police officer who maintains he is innocent of the 1987 murder of an 11-year-old girl, is scheduled to die at noon.
Occhicone, condemned for the 1986 Pasco County murders of his former fianceé’s parents, is set to die six hours later. At 80, Occhicone will be the oldest person Florida has put to death since the state resumed capital punishment in 1979.
Pasco man committed family massacre
Occhicone was convicted in the 1986 murders of Raymond and Martha Artzner. He’d previously been engaged to marry their daughter, Anita Gerrety, but she ended what was described in court records and news accounts as a volatile relationship.
Bartenders at Shooter’s Lounge in Elfers said Occhicone was a regular, often showing up when the bar opened at 7 a.m. He drank between 10-15 vodka cocktails before lunchtime each day, they said. People heard him lamenting the demise of his relationship and voicing hostility toward the Artzners and Gerrety.
She later testified he’d threatened to kill her and her family.
“He would hurt whatever I loved the most,” she testified. “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.”
In the early morning of June 10, 1986, Occhicone showed up outside the Holiday home Gerrety shared with her parents. He knocked at a sliding glass door. Gerrety woke, told him to go away and threatened to call police.
Occhicone left, but returned with a gun. He disabled the home’s phone line, then banged at doors and windows. Raymond Artzner came outside, wielding a broomstick and told him to leave.
Gerrety later said Occhicone looked at her and grinned. She saw a “flash of fire” before her father fell to the ground.
As Gerrety and her daughter fled the home, Occhicone broke through a locked door. When he saw Martha Artzner, he shot her four times.
At trial, Occhicone’s lawyers argued that his alcohol abuse and distraught mental state made him incapable of forming intent to kill. On psychologist testified he was “on a suicide errand, not a homicide errand.”
A jury convicted him. The same panel favored the death penalty by a vote of 7-5. Such a vote today would result in a life sentence; Florida law now requires a minimum of eight votes for the death penalty to be imposed.
Convicted ex-cop claimed innocence
Almost a full year later and 60 miles away in the small town of Mascotte, an 11-year-old girl named Teresa McAbee vanished.
She’d gone out late one night to a Circle K store near her home to buy a pencil to do her math homework.
Duckett, one of the town’s two police officers, saw her talking to an older boy outside the store. He warned the kids they were out after curfew. The boy left with his uncle while Duckett placed the girl in his patrol car.
He would later say he lectured her about being out late before letting her go. When McAbee’s mother later reported her missing, Duckett spoke with her and made a missing person flyer.
The girl’s body was found the next morning in a lake less than a mile away from the Circle K. She’s been raped, strangled and drowned.
Suspicions quickly fell on Duckett. Tire tracks near the murder scene were similar to the treads on his patrol car’s wheels. McAbee’s fingerprints were identified on the car’s hood, intermingled with Duckett’s.
An FBI analyst testified that a hair found on McAbee’s underwear was nearly identical to Duckett’s, though another expert could not make a match. A jailhouse informant, who surfaced months later, claimed she’d been near the Circle K and saw Duckett drive off with McAbee.
He was convicted. A jury recommended death by a vote of 8-4.
Duckett’s case bore some of the hallmarks common to wrongful convictions. They include faulty forensics — the FBI hair analyst was discredited after he was found to have given false and misleading testimony in other cases. And the jailhouse informant who testified in Duckett’s trial later recanted.
Duckett had long sought DNA testing, but the science was not advanced enough until recent years. He again asked for DNA testing after DeSantis signed his death warrant earlier this year. A court allowed the testing and his execution was temporarily stayed. That stay was lifted after the test results came back inconclusive.
Both executions are set to be carried out by lethal injection at Florida State Prison, near the city of Starke.
This is a developing story. Check back with Tampabay.com for updates.