Former police officer James Duckett was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on March 30th for raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl while on duty in Florida. But DNA testing stopped that.
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When 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee was kidnapped, raped, strangled and drowned in the small Florida city of Mascot nearly 40 years ago, a surprising suspect emerged. It was a rookie cop named James Duckett.
The only undisputed fact about this case is that Duckett was at work when he encountered Teresa at a convenience store on May 11, 1987. The little girl was walking there to buy a pencil.
Duckett tells Teresa that he needs to go home and claims that was the last time he saw her. Prosecutors allege that Duckett was a monster in disguise who misused his badge to brutally rape and murder Teresa and abandon her body in a lake.
Jurors accepted the state’s version of events, finding Duckett guilty of murder and recommending the death penalty, based largely on circumstantial evidence.
Almost 40 years later, the DNA in the case could either save Duckett’s life or seal his fate.
Duckett, 68, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at a Florida prison on Tuesday, March 31st, but with less than a week to go, the Florida Supreme Court issued an unusual stay of execution pending the results of a DNA test. Then, on Monday, March 30, the court upheld the stay, effectively blocking any possibility that the execution could proceed as scheduled.
Executions are on hold for now, but not forever.
As Duckett awaits his fate, USA TODAY takes a closer look at the case, recent court action and why no DNA testing was ever done.
What happened to Theresa May Maccabee?
On May 11, 1987, the destinies of 29-year-old rookie police officer James “Jimmy” Duckett and 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee were intertwined.
Around 10 p.m., Teresa was walking to her local Circle K convenience store in Mascot, Fla., to buy pencils. Mascot was a rural town just west of Orlando, with a population of less than 2,000 at the time.
Duckett was on patrol for the Mascot Police Department. According to court records, the married father of two, who had been in the military for seven months, stopped by Circle K on his routine patrol and spotted Teresa talking with a 16-year-old boy outside the store.
Mr. Duckett has always maintained that he had told Teresa and the teenage boy to each go home. But the boy and his uncle later said Duckett put Teresa in his patrol car and drove off.
Teresa’s mother arrived at Circle K around 11 p.m. looking for her daughter. The clerk tells her that Teresa may have gone with Duckett, and her mother begins searching the area. Not finding Teresa, she contacted the police and subsequently filed a missing person report with Duckett, the only police officer on patrol at the time.
Teresa’s body was discovered the next morning by a fisherman at Knight Lake, less than a mile from the Circle K. The coroner then discovered that she had been raped, strangled, and drowned by her assailants, but was still alive. Body fluids, possibly the killer’s, were found in her underwear, including preserved DNA.
Duckett was identified as a suspect by sheriff’s investigators. Chuck Johnson said he thought the officers appeared nervous at the scene where the bodies were recovered, saying they were “not interested in death,” and described his interactions with Teresa and the events of the previous night as “rehearsed stories.” Duckett was charged with murder five months later.
What happened at James Duckett’s trial?
At trial, prosecutors called James Duckett a “cold-blooded murderer” and said that unlike him, Teresa had no judge or jury.
According to court records, they told jurors, “She had a police officer named Duckett pick her up, put her in his car and take her to Night Lake. And the police officer sentenced her to rape and threatened to prosecute her for robbing him of his power, the omnipotent power of his badge.” “She threatened to tell when she was hurt, so he sentenced her to death. He acted as the executioner.”
The state’s evidence includes Teresa’s pubic hair that FBI analysts said matched Duckett’s, Teresa’s fingerprints on the hood of Duckett’s car, tire marks at the murder scene that police said matched Duckett’s patrol car, and a key witness who testified that shortly after speaking with Teresa, he saw Duckett drive away with a small person in his patrol car.
Prosecutors also took to the stand three young women who testified that they were minors at the time of sexual harassment and abuse by Duckett.
Duckett’s lawyers are trying to poke holes in the trial evidence, arguing that Teresa’s fingerprints were on the hood of her car because she was sitting on it at Circle K, that a second hair found on the girl’s body did not match Duckett’s, and that Duckett’s tire tracks were at the scene because she drove to the scene after the body was found.
They also allege that the state’s key witness agreed to give false testimony in exchange for early release, and that there was no evidence to support the stories of three young women who said Mr. Duckett behaved inappropriately.
Duckett’s lawyers also argue that there were likely suspects in the case, including the teenage girl Teresa had spoken to before she disappeared, as well as various men who were her mother’s boyfriends and friends.
“For reasons beyond his control, James Duckett was singled out as the suspect while other more likely suspects were allowed to flee,” his attorneys argue in court records. “Rather than finding the real culprit, the state chose to pursue a circumstantial evidence case against Mr. Duckett.”
Just before he was sentenced to death, Duckett begged the judge in the case to spare his life.
“I didn’t do it,” he said, according to court records. “When the person who did this does it again, I want to see the look on the face of the victim who says to the victim’s mother, father, sister, brother, ‘I’m sorry. I thought I was right before.'”
Execution was scheduled and then stopped
The execution of James Duckett, who spent nearly 40 years on death row, was scheduled for March 31 after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant last month.
Duckett’s lawyers fought to prevent his execution so that semen taken from the crime scene could be tested for DNA. On March 26, the Florida Supreme Court agreed to issue a stay of execution pending test results.
The results announced on March 27 were inconclusive, likely because so little DNA was collected to be analyzed. But Duckett’s lawyers had argued that another lab was more likely to produce useful results.
The Florida Supreme Court could have lifted the injunction because the initial results were inconclusive. Instead, the court decided in a 6-1 decision on March 30 to uphold the decision, and Duckett’s execution was stayed for the time being.
Duckett’s attorney, Mary Wells, told USA TODAY that the suspension is “an important step toward preventing the irreparable harm that would occur if Florida were to execute an innocent man.”
“DNA testing… has the potential to conclusively prove Mr. Duckett’s innocence,” she said. “There is no valid scientific basis for prohibiting secondary inspectors from analyzing the results if the outcome is life or death for a human being.”
The state’s attorney general had argued in court that the stay should be lifted because the DNA test results were inconclusive and Mr Duckett sought it too late.
“Defendant Duckett waited until a warrant was signed requesting DNA testing for a murder he committed more than 38 years ago, but he has known about the (DNA) slides since at least his surrender in 2003,” they wrote. “But he didn’t ask for a DNA test as soon as the science was sufficiently advanced. A truly innocent person would have asked for a DNA test as soon as it was available.”
What is happening now?
In an order upholding the stay of execution, the Florida Supreme Court ordered Lake County Circuit Court Judge Brian Welke to submit a status report to the superior court by the end of April 2.
Welke is expected to decide whether further DNA testing is warranted. Mr. Welke was the first judge to grant Mr. Duckett’s request for DNA testing.
In a dissenting opinion upholding the stay, Florida Supreme Court Justice Adam Tannenbaum said Duckett’s DNA dispute amounted to a “Hail Mary pass” and that given the inconclusive test results, “there is nothing more[Welke]can do at this time.”
“In fact, as has been the case for decades, there is simply no evidence to justify further delay in the defendant’s execution, which is long overdue,” Tannenbaum wrote. “Justice for the victims and their families has been delayed for too long. The defendant’s time is up.”
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter covering cold case investigations and capital punishment for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
