Dominic Occhikorn, 80, is scheduled to be executed in Florida on July 28th. He is one of a growing number of infirm and elderly prisoners finally serving their sentences. Is it justice?
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.
Dominique Occhikorn, an 80-year-old inmate on Florida’s death row, has a host of health problems, including heart disease, impaired kidney function, an enlarged prostate, arthritis and degenerative disc disease, according to his attorney.
Occhicone has hearing, sight and walking difficulties, and requires security guards to help him get in and out of the shower and up and down stairs, according to court records filed by his attorney.
The Grim Reaper is clearly designed to be an Occicorn, but Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to get there first.
The Republican governor last month signed a death warrant against Occhicone for the 1986 murder of his ex-fiancée’s mother. Now in his 80s, he is the second-oldest inmate ever executed in the United States and is scheduled to be executed in Florida on July 28, making him the oldest inmate ever.
Occhione is one of a growing number of elderly death row inmates facing execution days up to 50 years after their crimes. The age and health conditions of these prisoners are raising increasingly important questions in courts and the court of public opinion. The question is, at what age must a person be eligible for the death penalty?
“This is cruel and unusual punishment and an insult to the conscience of everyone involved,” said Grace Hanna, executive director of Floridians Alternative to the Death Penalty. “(Otchkorn) is 80 years old. He looks like an 80-year-old, but he has the health problems of an 80-year-old.”
In a recent Florida Supreme Court filing, Mr. Occicone’s lawyers argue that executing such an “infirm” man is unconstitutional and amounts to “a clear injustice that shocks the conscience.”
“(It) no longer has retaliatory value based on his advanced age and will only serve the purpose of revenge and undermine the dignity of our society,” they argue.
Florida, which executes more elderly prisoners than any other state, disagrees.
“Mr. Occhikorn has failed to demonstrate national consensus against the execution of elderly people,” the Florida Attorney General’s Office said in a recent filing. “Ockikorn has not been able to prove that his execution would result in a clear injustice, as his execution has both a retaliatory and a deterrent effect.”
The state further said, “If anything, the fact that the Florida Legislature has not prohibited the execution of elderly persons indicates that such punishment does not violate evolving standards of decency.”
Here’s what you need to know about the growing number of elderly death row inmates, the number of people being executed, and the debate over whether killing them constitutes justice or cruel and unusual punishment.
Elderly prisoners in numbers
Of the more than 1,900 people on death row in the United States, at least 470 are over the age of 64, according to a USA TODAY analysis of state Department of Corrections data and statistics from the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. That’s 25%.
No matter how you look at it, the number of elderly death row inmates is growing, as appeals procedures and other delays add up, sometimes lasting up to 50 years. Many inmates have been scheduled for execution multiple times over the years, but last-minute appeals have added years to their lives.
As of 2023, the average age of death row inmates was 54 years old, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Statistics and Death Penalty Information Center. By comparison, in 2001 he was 39 years old.
America’s oldest death row inmate was born in the 1930s. Among them is 93-year-old Blanche Taylor Moore, who was convicted of poisoning her boyfriend in 1986 and charged with poisoning three other relatives in North Carolina.
Also on death row are Joseph “Crazy Joe” Naso, 92, who was convicted of murdering at least four women in California in the 1970s and 1980s, and David Carpenter, 96, known as the Trailside Killer, who was convicted of murdering at least six women and one man in California in the 1970s and 1980s.
Over the years, many death row inmates have died of natural causes before being executed. In Utah, for example, 67-year-old Ralph Leroy Menzies died of presumed natural causes in November after spending 37 years on death row for the 1986 murder of Maureen Hunsaker, a 26-year-old married mother of three. His death came two months after the Utah Supreme Court halted the execution by firing squad, citing concerns that his dementia was so severe that he could not understand why he was being killed.
After Menzies’ death, Utah Attorney General Derek Brown said the state had been pursuing justice for decades, saying, “The road has been long, painful, and more than the victim’s family will have to endure.”
In recent years, executions of elderly people have also been carried out.
Florida executes far more elderly prisoners than any other state.
Six states have executed 23 inmates over the age of 62 in 2025 and so far this year, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center analyzed by USA TODAY. Sixteen of those people were in Florida. That’s 70%.
Florida has already made history this year when, on June 25, 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer became the state’s oldest death row inmate. He was executed in Orange County in 1992 for the sadistic murder of his wife in front of their teenage son.
And on July 14, Florida broke that record with the execution of 74-year-old Dennis Michael Socho for the murder of an 18-year-old woman in Broward County on New Year’s Eve 1981. Spencer was born in 1952 less than two weeks before Socho, but Socho lived 19 days longer.
If Dominick Occcone’s execution goes ahead as scheduled on July 28, he will be the oldest inmate ever executed in the state and the second-oldest in the nation. The oldest inmate ever put to death in the United States was 83-year-old Walter LeRoy Moody Jr., executed in Alabama in 2018 for assassinating a federal judge with a pipe bomb.
In addition to planning to execute Otchcorn on July 28, Florida also plans to execute another elderly inmate, 68-year-old former police officer James Duckett, on the same day for the 1987 kidnapping and murder of an 11-year-old girl. If both executions are carried out, it will be the first time in more than 60 years that two inmates have been put to death on the same day in Florida.
Florida’s execution of elderly inmates reflects Gov. Ron DeSantis’ aggressive push to put more inmates to death in the state than ever before. 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.”
Is killing the elderly worth the cost to taxpayers?
Recent executions raise questions not only about putting elderly and infirm inmates to death, but also about the decades it takes for victims to get justice. Without considering any legal appeals, Occicone cost Florida taxpayers $850,000, Tampa television station WTVT reported.
Victims’ loved ones repeatedly told USA TODAY that an extended appeals process that would allow the killer to live on death row for decades would only increase their suffering. Among them is the family of Tressa Lynn Pettibone, a 33-year-old housewife of three whose body was found brutally murdered on her kitchen floor by her 8-year-old son in Panama City, Florida, in 1989.
Pettibone’s murderer, 58-year-old Mark Allen Gerards, was executed by lethal injection on December 9, nearly 40 years after the murder.
“For the first time in almost 37 years, we will not have to wake up tomorrow and worry about another appeal or another change in the law that could obstruct the justice we have fought so hard for so many years,” the family said in a statement after the execution, adding, “This long legal journey we have endured has at times seemed endless.”
After 70-year-old James Ernest Hitchcock was executed on April 30 for the 1976 murder of 13-year-old Cindy Driggers in Winter Garden, Florida, the teenager’s cousin spoke to reporters about the 50-year wait for his trial.
“I’ve been living with this for 50 years. Today I can breathe,” Chip Driggers said. “We’re finally free, we’re finally free. Our monster is dead.”
Some of the victims’ families die before they see justice served.
“I’m so glad this happened in our lifetime,” Marilyn Gifford, whose 18-year-old sister Patti was murdered in 1982, recently told The Associated Press about her killer’s execution earlier this month. “I wish my mother had been alive to see it.”
What do courts say about executing elderly people?
Although courts have ruled that certain inmates cannot be executed based on age-related factors, as in the Menzies case in Utah, in the United States no one is too old to be executed unless other factors, such as dementia, are at play.
The Florida Supreme Court recently rejected an argument by lawyers for 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer, all but one of whom were appointed by Mr. DeSantis, that he should be spared the death penalty because of his age. The court also rejected Occhiccone’s appeal on July 21, citing his age and condition.
“No Supreme Court decision has interpreted the Eighth Amendment to explicitly exempt elderly defendants from the death penalty, and we do not intend to enact the Eighth Amendment now.”
The U.S. Supreme Court currently recognizes three distinct exemptions from the death penalty: the mentally incompetent, the mentally retarded, and the murderer under the age of 18.
In 2017, then-Clinton Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer expressed concern about the 67-year-old inmate who spent nearly half his life on death row for the 1985 shooting death of an Alabama state trooper. Breyer noted that inmate Vernon Madison had suffered a stroke, vascular dementia, was legally blind, could not walk on his own and was incontinent.
“His disability leaves him with no memory of when he committed the death penalty,” Breyer said at the time.
“Given this trend, we may see more cases in which states seek to execute prisoners suffering from age-related illnesses or debilitation,” Breyer continued. “And it may be necessary to consider that long periods of imprisonment between the death sentence and the execution may deepen the brutality of the death penalty and at the same time undermine its penal rationality.”
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter covering capital punishment, cold cases and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat. John Pacenti is a government impact reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-FLORIDA.
