The state of Florida executed James Duckett and Dominic Occhikorn within about five hours. Duckett was a former police officer convicted of murdering an 11-year-old girl. Occicone murdered his ex-boyfriend’s parents.
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 has put to death two inmates in the state’s first double execution in more than 60 years, amid an aggressive push for the death penalty by Governor Ron DeSantis.
James Duckett, a 68-year-old former police officer convicted of murdering an 11-year-old girl in 1987, was executed by lethal injection on July 28 at 1:19 p.m. ET.
About five hours later, the state of Florida executed Dominic Occicone at 6:13 p.m. ET for the 1986 murders of his ex-fiancée’s parents. At 80 years old, Occiccone was the second-oldest inmate ever executed in the United States and the oldest inmate executed in Florida, which executes more elderly inmates than any other state in the nation.
Tuesday marked the first time since 1964 that two inmates were executed on the same day in Florida, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center’s execution database. The last time a state executed two inmates in a day was in 2017, according to the nonprofit organization.
The rare double execution comes amid DeSantis’ aggressive push to put more inmates to death than ever before in Florida. Of the 66 inmates executed in the United States since January 2025, Florida has executed 31 (47%), including Duckett and Otchkorn, according to a USA TODAY analysis. Since the beginning of this year, Florida has carried out 63% of the nation’s executions.
DeSantis said he wants to bring closure to families who have waited for justice, sometimes for more than 40 years.
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 Florida Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY on the allegations of political motivation.
Here’s what you need to know about Duckett and Otchcorn’s crimes and what’s going on in Florida.
What was James Duckett convicted of?
On May 11, 1987, Teresa Mae McAbee, then 11 years old, walked to a local convenience store in Mascot, Florida, around 10 p.m., to buy a pencil. Mascot was a rural town located just west of Orlando, with a population of less than 2,000 at the time.
James “Jimmy” Duckett, a 29-year-old rookie police officer, was on patrol at the Mascot Police Department. According to court records, the married father of two sons was making routine rounds when he 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.
The next morning, Teresa’s body was found by a fisherman in Knight Lake, less than a mile from the convenience store. The coroner later discovered that she had been raped and strangled, and was still alive when her assailants drowned her. 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 seemed 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.”
Duckett was charged with murder five months later. He was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Duckett was scheduled to be executed in March, but won a rare moratorium from the Florida Supreme Court pending new DNA testing. The test was inconclusive, Duckett’s probation expired on July 11, and DeSantis rescheduled the execution with a death warrant signed on July 14.
It was the end of decades of delays for Teresa’s family.
After witnessing Duckett’s execution on July 28, Teresa’s mother was able to say a few words before she began to cry uncontrollably.
“I’ve been waiting for him to die for 40 years,” Dorothy Tula said in a trembling voice.
His sister Shirley Lancaster rubbed Tula’s shoulder and spoke for the family, saying, “The country let him live too long.”
“She was only 11 years old,” Lancaster said. “We’ve been living without that baby for so long. … She could have been the next doctor. She could have been the next president, we don’t know. But we never had a chance to find out because this bastard took her from us.”
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 Occone Jr. went to the home of his ex-fiancée, Anita Gerrity, 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 Gerrity’s father, Raymond Artzner, 66. According to court records, Occhicone smiled as he shot and killed Gerrity, then ran into the house and shot and killed Gerrity’s mother, Martha Artzner, 62. Gerrity and her 10-year-old daughter were able to escape.
At trial, Occhiccone’s lawyers argued that he was so drunk that night and filled with jealousy and anger that he became temporarily insane. Later, after Occhikorn was convicted of both murders, his attorney argued that life in prison was more appropriate, telling jurors that “life in prison is so harsh on people that they don’t live to be 92 years old,” according to archival reporting in the Tampa Tribune.
The jury voted 7-5 for the death penalty, and the judge agreed.
In 1997, 11 years after the murder, the victim’s son told the Tribune that he was frustrated by the delay in the execution.
“It’s frustrating,” Jim Artzner told the paper. “Justice isn’t over yet. … It’s been going on for a long time. When will it end?”
That was 31 years ago.
On July 28, after witnessing Occhiccone’s execution, the Artners’ loved ones told reporters it was “the end of a long and painful journey.”
“Since June 10, 1986, there have been years of sleepless nights, empty chairs at family gatherings, and a loss of one-on-one conversations,” they said in a statement. “We have been robbed of birthdays, milestones, and the simple joys of everyday life. The pain and sadness will always be there and will never go away.”
They went on to say that Occhicone’s execution will not erase their pain, “but it will close the door and bring to an end a chapter in our lives that has lasted far too long.”
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 prisoners than all other states combined. Florida has put 12 prisoners to death, including Duckett. A total of seven inmates were executed in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona.
The state also executes more elderly prisoners than any other state.
Six states have executed 25 inmates over the age of 62 in 2025 and so far this year, including Duckett and Otschkorn, according to Death Penalty Information Center data analyzed by USA TODAY. Of those, 18 were in Florida, or 72%.
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, so experts say the law technically allows every conceivable method, from hanging to stoning.
For critics and observers of the death penalty, the double execution on July 28 comes as no surprise. They questioned why the state wanted to execute a “frail” 80-year-old man with a number of illnesses, and argued that more time was needed for DNA analysis in Duckett’s case.
“Governor DeSantis’ secretive and self-serving pursuit of a record number of executions ignores the trauma that two executions in one day has on prison staff,” Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, previously told USA TODAY. “His rush to kill an 80-year-old elderly 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 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: Alicia Devine, Tallahassee Democrat
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter covering cold case investigations and capital punishment for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
