Florida is set to become the first state in nearly a decade to conduct two executions in a single day on Tuesday as Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration continues to move on death penalty cases at an unprecedented rate.
James Aren Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at noon at Florida State Prison near Starke, according to the Associated Press. Duckett, a former Mascotte police officer, was convicted of the 1987 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee. Prosecutors said he abducted the girl, sexually assaulted her, strangled her, and drowned her in a lake less than a mile from the store where she was last seen.
About six hours later, Florida plans to execute 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone, who would become the second-oldest inmate put to death in the modern era of the U.S. death penalty, according to the Associated Press.
Occhicone was convicted of the 1986 murders of his former girlfriend’s parents, Raymond and Martha Artzner, in Pasco County. Prosecutors said he returned to the family’s home armed with a handgun after his former girlfriend refused to speak with him, cut the home’s telephone lines, fatally shot Raymond Artzner outside the house, then forced his way inside and killed Martha Artzner.
The Florida Supreme Court earlier this week rejected emergency appeals from both Duckett and Occhicone. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court also denied their final appeals, clearing the way for the back-to-back executions. No justice noted a dissent.
With six months left in office, DeSantis has presided over a record 19 executions in 2025, the most by any Florida governor in a single year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to an AP analysis. Tuesday’s two executions would raise the number of executions under DeSantis’s final two years in office to 31, with another scheduled for August.
“July 28 represents an unprecedented escalation of Florida’s use of the death penalty,” said Grace Hanna, Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “These are two profoundly different cases, but they point to the same troubling reality: Florida continues to expand the use of capital punishment, despite mounting evidence that it is not what Floridians want.”
The Florida Governor, however, is not alone.
In April, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice on Friday directed the Bureau of Prisons to bring back the firing squad and lethal injection for federal executions.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a series of new measures to strengthen enforcement of the federal death penalty, clearing the way for the DOJ to carry out executions once inmates exhaust their appeals.
“Among the actions taken are readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump Administration, expanding the protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad, and streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases,” the Justice Department said in a press release.
The directives fulfill a campaign promise for Trump, who on his first day back in office issued an order to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use” and marks a reversal from the Biden administration’s handling of federal executions.
In 2021, former President Joe Biden’s DOJ imposed an indefinite moratorium, effectively blocking all federal executions. In December 2024, he commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 inmates on federal death row at the urging of then-Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Those granted mass clemency included Thomas Sanders, who was convicted of murdering 12-year-old Lexis Roberts and hiding her body in the woods. Another included Daryl Lawrence, who killed 33-year-old Ohio police officer Bryan Hurst during a 2005 bank robbery in Columbus.
“These decisions inflicted untold damage on victims of crime and, ultimately, to the rule of law itself,” Blanche said.
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