Florida carried out two executions in a single day on Tuesday, the first state to do so in nearly 10 years, including the lethal injection of an 80-year-old man believed to be the second-oldest prisoner executed in modern U.S. history.
Earlier in the day, Florida put to death a former police officer who had been convicted in the killing of a young girl.
Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s execution chamber has become the busiest in the country near the end of his final term, with the governor arguing that victims’ families have waited far too long for justice. Tuesday’s executions, conducted only hours apart, marked the closest sequence of back-to-back executions since Arkansas executed two men three hours apart in 2017.
DeSantis, who has the power under Florida law to schedule executions, ordered earlier this month that both sentences be carried out on the same day.
Across the United States, capital punishment had been on a two-decade decline, but the national total has risen as Florida has accelerated its use of the death penalty. Since the start of 2025, the state has accounted for nearly half of all executions carried out nationwide.
Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke after receiving a three-drug lethal injection. His execution took place almost five hours after James Aren Duckett, 68, the former police officer, was administered a lethal dose in the same death chamber.
For the second time Tuesday, the curtain to the execution chamber rose at Occhicone’s scheduled 6 p.m. execution. He was secured to a gurney with an IV inserted in his arm, while a spiritual adviser stood near his feet.
When asked whether he wanted to give a final statement, Occhicone thanked the Christian brothers who had visited him over the years. He also apologized to his own family for what he had put them through, as well as to the victims’ family.
“I know it don’t mean much, but I’m sorry,” Occhicone said. “I never meant to do what I did.”
The lethal injection began at 6:02 p.m., followed by several minutes of deep breathing. When Occhicone’s breathing slowed, a team warden shook him and yelled his name, but there was no response.
Occhicone, who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986, is the oldest prisoner executed in Florida’s history since modern record-keeping began a century ago. Nationwide, an older inmate, 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr., received a lethal injection in Alabama in 2018 for a wave of mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.
Florida Department of Corrections via AP
A former police officer was executed in the afternoon
Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Duckett became the 11th inmate executed by the state of Florida this year. He was convicted of raping and drowning 11-year-old Teresa McAbee while he was working as a police officer in central Florida in 1987.
Duckett declined to make a final statement, responding “no sir” when asked and showing no response when the prison warden shook him and shouted his name minutes into his execution. He was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m.
Afterward, the girl’s family members said they had suffered for decades.
“I waited nearly 40 years to have him dead,” Dorthy Tula, the victim’s mother, said before breaking down.
“This man took advantage of his badge,” said Tracy Mcfall-Buskirk, the girl’s cousin.
Record execution numbers for governor’s final 2 years
Nationwide, a total of 19 executions have been carried out so far this year, including Tuesday’s. Florida has now conducted 12 executions to date in 2026 — more than all other states combined.
DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions last year, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. in 1976.
Another execution in Florida is set for August.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty had recently urged DeSantis to halt both executions, calling two in one day an “unprecedented escalation” of Florida’s use of the death penalty.
“Florida continues to expand the use of capital punishment, despite mounting evidence that it is not what Floridians want,” said the group’s executive director, Grace Hanna.
Many on Florida’s death row have been there for decades
DeSantis hasn’t said why he scheduled two executions hours apart. And he has rarely commented on the pace of executions, previously noting some on death row had committed crimes as far back as the 1980s.
“Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly,” the governor said last year.
Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, the last being in 1964.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied last appeals from both men Tuesday and the Florida Supreme Court last week.
All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
