The state of Florida is scheduled to execute former police officer James Duckett on July 28 at noon ET for the 1987 murder of an 11-year-old girl. In six hours, Dominique Occhikorn is scheduled to be executed for the 1986 serial murders.
Florida plans first double execution date in decades
Florida is scheduled to carry out two executions on July 28, marking the first executions on the same day since 1964. Both men have spent decades on death row.
Florida plans to carry out two executions on the same day for the first time in more than 60 years, cementing its new status as the nation’s busiest state for the death penalty.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has rescheduled the execution of James Duckett for July 28th at 12:00 pm ET, the same day that another inmate, Dominic Anthony Occhorne Jr., was already scheduled to be executed. Otschkorn’s execution is scheduled for 6 p.m. ET.
Duckett, a former police officer, was scheduled to be executed in March for the 1987 murder of an 11-year-old girl, but won a rare stay from the Florida Supreme Court pending the results of new DNA testing. The test was inconclusive, and Duckett’s probation expired on July 11. DeSantis rescheduled the execution in a death warrant signed on July 14.
If the executions of both Mr. Duckett and Mr. Occhorne proceed, it will be the first time since 1964 that two inmates have been executed on the same day in Florida, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center’s execution database.
The unusual double execution came amid DeSantis’ aggressive push for the state to put more inmates to death than ever before. Of the 64 inmates executed in the United States since January 2025, 29 were executed in Florida under the DeSantis administration. According to an analysis by USA TODAY, that number is 45%. Since the beginning of this year, Florida has carried out 58% of the nation’s executions.
Mr. DeSantis said he wants to bring closure to families who have waited, sometimes more than 40 years, for the execution of their loved ones’ killers.
But the Republican action has drawn increasing criticism from death penalty opponents and observers, who say the governor is motivated by political ambitions for the 2028 presidential election and is “increasingly treating executions as a routine tool of political power,” according to a recent statement from Floridians Against the Death Penalty.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY on July 15.
Here’s what you need to know about Duckett and Otchcorn’s crimes, upcoming executions, and what’s happening in Florida.
What was James Duckett convicted of?
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 walked 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. Unable to find 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. He was found guilty and sentenced to death.
What was Dominic Anthony Occhorne Jr. convicted of?
According to court records, in the early morning hours of June 10, 1986, an angry Dominick Anthony Occhorne Jr. went to the home of his ex-fiancée, Anita Gerety, in the coastal community of Holiday, Florida, about 30 miles northwest of Tampa.
Otschkorn was knocking on windows and doors when he came face-to-face with Gerety’s father, Raymond Artzner, 66. According to court records, Occicone smiled at Gueretti as he shot and killed his father, then ran into the house and shot and killed his mother, Martha Alzner, 62. Gerety and her 10-year-old daughter were able to escape.
He was sentenced to death for each murder.
Otchkorn, now 80 years old, will become the oldest death row inmate executed in Florida’s history and the second-oldest death row inmate in U.S. history.
What is happening in Florida?
Since January 2025, Florida has been the state with the highest number of executions in the nation. So far this year, the Sunshine State has executed more inmates than all other states combined. Florida has put 10 inmates to death, and Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona have executed a total of seven inmates.
Texas remains the state that executes the most prisoners, having executed 600 inmates since 1976, considered the beginning of the modern death penalty era, and is likely to retain that honor for some time. Florida is the next closest state with 135 executions during the same period, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
DeSantis is pushing for more executions in Florida. Not only has he signed more death warrants than any other governor in state history, he also signed a bill in 2023 that would add the death penalty as a punishment for people convicted of child sex crimes. He also signed legislation that broadly expands the state’s execution methods to include anything “not deemed unconstitutional” in 2025. No method of execution has ever been declared unconstitutional, and experts say the law technically allows every conceivable method, from hanging to stoning.
For death penalty critics and observers, the dual executions of Duckett and Otschkorn, scheduled for later this month, are no surprise. They question why the state decided to execute an 80-year-old man so many years later and argue that more time is needed for DNA analysis in Duckett’s case, as recent test results have been inconclusive.
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told USA TODAY that “Governor DeSantis’ secretive and self-serving pursuit of a record number of executions ignores the trauma that two executions in one day causes to prison staff.” “His rush to kill an 80-year-old man and a potentially innocent man only proves the reckless disregard with which he is making these decisions.”
DeSantis recently told ProPublica that meeting the victims’ loved ones strengthened his resolve to see the old death sentences carried out.
“There’s a saying: ‘Justice delayed is justice denied,'” DeSantis said. “We are doing this to bring justice to the families of the victims.”
Contributor: CA Bridges, USA TODAY Network – Florida
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter covering cold case investigations and capital punishment for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
