{"id":252259,"date":"2026-04-30T09:57:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T09:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/252259\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T09:57:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T09:57:06","slug":"man-guilty-of-killing-his-13-year-old-step-niece-is-set-to-be-floridas-6th-execution-of-2026-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/252259\/","title":{"rendered":"Man guilty of killing his 13-year-old step-niece is set to be Florida&#8217;s 6th execution of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"D6I4KDCE3ZG7NHBGD72YLLRZXQ\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">STARKE, Fla. \u2014 A Florida man convicted of beating and choking his 13-year-old step-niece to death nearly 50 years ago is set to be executed Thursday evening.<\/p>\n<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"73UK427PKFAVRHWA2TXGOFG3UQ\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">James Ernest Hitchcock, 70, is scheduled to receive a three-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. Hitchcock was initially sentenced to death in 1977 after being convicted of first-degree murder in the July 31, 1976, killing of Cynthia Driggers. Following a series of appeals, he was resentenced to death in 1988, 1993 and 1996.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STARKE, Fla. \u2014 A Florida man convicted of beating and choking his 13-year-old step-niece to death nearly 50&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1312,265,28,30,29,477,1109,1105,1840,1110,110090,6410],"class_list":["post-252259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-capital-punishment","tag-crime","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-general-news","tag-homicide","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-prisons","tag-u-s-news","tag-us-florida-execution","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}