{"id":355007,"date":"2026-07-28T15:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/355007\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T15:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:57:09","slug":"former-lake-county-police-officer-duckett-faces-lethal-injection-at-noon-1st-of-2-executions-planned-today-orlando-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/355007\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Lake County police officer Duckett faces lethal injection at noon; 1st of 2 executions planned today \u2013 Orlando Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"

STARKE (AP) \u2014 Florida is set to become the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, planning lethal injections Tuesday for an ex-police officer from Central Florida convicted of a young girl\u2019s murder and an octogenarian who would be the second-oldest inmate put to death in modern U.S. history.<\/p>\n

The planned injections come 18 months after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis began stepping up executions at a rate unseen in modern times in Florida. DeSantis hasn\u2019t said why he scheduled two executions six hours apart, and Florida prison officials haven\u2019t said whether the timing creates any logistical challenges for staff.<\/p>\n

James Aren Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at noon at Florida State Prison near Starke, followed later that day by 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone, who also would become the oldest prisoner executed in Florida\u2019s modern history.<\/p>\n

\"DorothyDorothy McAbee, mother of Teresa McAbee, listens during pre-sentencing during her daughter’s murder trial May 10, 1988. (Orlando Sentinel file)<\/p>\n

Duckett was convicted of raping and drowning 11-year-old Teresa McAbee while working as a police officer in the small Lake County city of Mascotte in 1987, and Occhicone was convicted of the 1986 killings of his ex-girlfriend\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n

A federal judge in Jacksonville on Monday denied<\/a> a last-minute appeal by Duckett to halt his execution so that several items of clothing and scrapings from under the victim\u2019s fingernails can be tested for DNA.<\/p>\n

Represenatives from several national anti-death penality organizations plan to hold vigils on Tuesday\u00a0 \u2014 including in Tallahassee, Raiford, and in Lake and Pasco counties \u2014 to protest the unprecedented two executions in one day. The gatherings will include prayers and bell tollings.<\/p>\n

In Lake County, a protest vigil is planned for 11 a.m. Tuesday in front of the Lake County Courthouse, 550 W. Main St., Tavares.<\/p>\n

Duckett is also the grandfather to Trenton Duckett<\/a>, a 2-year-old who went missing in 2006 sparking a nationwide search and global media sensation.<\/p>\n

Duckett and Occhicone would become Florida\u2019s 11th and 12th inmates to be executed this year if their sentences are carried out.<\/p>\n

The Florida Supreme Court denied appeals for both men last week. Duckett\u2019s attorneys had asked for another stay, claiming that Duckett is innocent and that the state\u2019s handling of the DNA evidence is the reason for the inconclusive results. Occhicone\u2019s attorneys argued that several age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, could make his execution especially painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment.<\/p>\n

Both men still had appeals pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\"ThisThis combo from photos provided by Florida Department of Corrections shows from left, James Aren Duckett and Dominick Anthony Occhicone. (Florida Department of Corrections via AP)
\nRecord numbers for governor\u2019s final two years<\/p>\n

A Florida prison official said Tuesday morning that the department was confident in its readiness to carry out both executions.<\/p>\n

The governor hasn\u2019t said why he scheduled two executions on the same day.<\/p>\n

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw\u00a0a record 19 executions in 2025, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976. The previous high was\u00a0eight executions\u00a0set in 2014.<\/p>\n

If Tuesday\u2019s executions proceed, that would bring the total for DeSantis\u2019 final two years in office up to 31 overall, compared to just nine executions during the first six years of his administration. Another execution is scheduled for August.<\/p>\n

DeSantis initially signed a death warrant for Duckett in February, setting a March execution date. But the Florida Supreme Court issued a stay just days before that date to allow for DNA testing of old evidence that couldn\u2019t be performed at the time of the original trial because of technical limitations. The results were inconclusive, meaning they did not exonerate Duckett or definitively connect him to the crime. Judges have allowed the jury verdict to stand.<\/p>\n

When Occhicone\u2019s death warrant was signed late last month, his was the only execution scheduled for Tuesday. But after the Florida Supreme Court removed Duckett\u2019s stay on July 8,\u00a0DeSantis signed a new death\u00a0warrant and added Duckett to Occhicone\u2019s execution date, which hadn\u2019t been done in Florida in more than 60 years.\u00a0Florida Department of Corrections records<\/a>\u00a0show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, with the last being on May 12, 1964.<\/p>\n

Nationwide, it\u2019s not uncommon for two different states to hold executions on the same date, but it\u2019s less common for a single state to perform two. Before Arkansas executed two inmates on the same day in\u00a02017, Texas executed two convicted killers on a single day in 2000, the year it put to death\u00a040 prisoners.<\/p>\n

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty has urged DeSantis to halt both executions.<\/p>\n

\u201cJuly 28 represents an unprecedented escalation of Florida\u2019s use of the death penalty,\u201d the group\u2019s executive director, Grace Hanna, said in a statement. \u201cThese are two profoundly different cases, but they point to the same troubling reality: Florida continues to expand the use of capital punishment, despite mounting evidence that it is not what Floridians want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decades on Death Row<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s office has rarely commented on executions over the past 18 months. DeSantis has previously said his goal is to bring justice to victims\u2019 families who have waited decades for sentences to be carried out.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these crimes were committed in the \u201980s,\u201d the governor said in 2025. \u201cJustice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly. If I honestly thought someone was innocent, I would not pull the trigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Occhicone would become\u00a0Florida\u2019s oldest inmate\u00a0to be executed, just weeks after two 74-year-old men briefly held that spot, the second man just a week older than the first at his time of death. Recent executions have highlighted the nation\u2019s aging death-row population and renewed questions about the humanity of administering capital punishment to inmates who might die soon from natural causes.<\/p>\n

Occhicone also would become the second-oldest prisoner known to be executed in modern U.S. history after\u00a083-year-old Walter Moody Jr.\u00a0in Alabama in 2018. Moody was condemned for a wave of mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.<\/p>\n

Florida executions are all by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STARKE (AP) \u2014 Florida is set to become the first state in nearly a decade to carry out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[112,28,29,2174,114,266,11481,115,139,141,140,412,109],"class_list":["post-355007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-lake-county","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-mascotte","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-ron-desantis","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355007","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=355007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}