This July 28, Florida authorities executed two inmates convicted in separate murder cases. This is the first double execution that that state has carried out since 1964.
The executed prisoners were former police officer James Duckett, 68, and Dominick Occhicone, 80.
Duckett, convicted of the kidnapping, rape and murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in 1987, and Occhicone, convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986, exhausted legal avenues in the state, as the Florida Supreme Court rejected appeals in both cases.
In March, that same court had stopped Duckett’s execution to review a DNA test that his defense considered capable of exonerating him; However, an independent expert in June described it as inconclusive, neither to incriminate him nor to exonerate him.
For his part, Occhicone suffered from kidney and heart failure, as well as severe hearing and vision loss, according to his defense, who unsuccessfully argued that executing him in these conditions and at his advanced age represented cruel punishment, prohibited by the Constitution.
Furthermore, his lawyers recalled that the jury that convicted him was not unanimous: seven votes to five.
Occhicone became the oldest prisoner executed in Florida and the second in the United States, only behind Walter Moody, executed at age 83 in Alabama, in 2018.
Their lawyers went to a federal court in northern Florida last Friday with a joint lawsuit. They argued that two executions on the same day multiplied the risk of failures and that subjecting prison officials to this process in a period of six hours caused them unacceptable moral harm.
However, a judge ruled against it and only requests to stay the executions were pending before the United States Supreme Court, which were also unsuccessful.
With today’s executions, Florida has 31 since January 2025 and the United States has 66. This means that that state concentrates about half of the national total, according to the DPIC.