FLORIDA – A former police officer convicted of the on-duty rape and murder of a young girl was put to death Tuesday, the first of two lethal injections planned for a single day in Florida, hours before an 80-year-old man was to become the second-oldest inmate executed in modern U.S. history.
Tuesday marked the first time since two convicted murderers were executed on a single day — in Arkansas in 2017 — that a state has planned virtually back-to-back executions. The execution also comes 18 months after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis began stepping up executions at a pace unseen in Florida since the US death penalty was reinstated in 1976, making his the busiest death chamber in the nation. James Aren Duckett, 68, was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. The 11th inmate executed by the state this year, Duckett was convicted of raping and drowning an 11-year-old girl while working as a police officer in a small central Florida city in 1987.
Later Tuesday, barring any last-minute development, 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone was scheduled to become the oldest prisoner executed in Florida’s modern history starting at 6 p.m. Occhicone was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986.
Until Tuesday, a total of 17 executions had been carried out in the US so far this year, with Florida leading the way with more executions than all other states combined.
Both men had made last-ditch appeals to the US Supreme Court, and last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied appeals by both men to intervene. Duckett’s attorneys had unsuccessfully claimed Duckett’s innocence and argued the state’s handling of the DNA evidence is the reason for the inconclusive results.
Occhicone’s attorneys had argued that several age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, could make his execution especially painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment.
DeSantis hasn’t said why he scheduled two executions six hours apart, and Florida prison officials haven’t said whether the timing posed any logistical challenges. All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the US in 1976. The previous high was eight executions set in 2014.
If the day’s final execution is carried out Tuesday evening, that would bring total executions for DeSantis’ final two years in office to 31 overall, compared to just nine executions during his first six years in office. With another execution set for August, 2026 could also be a record-breaking year.
