Florida schedules two lethal injections on Tuesday, marking first dual executions in a decade
Florida will carry out lethal injections for a 68-year-old former police officer and an 80-year-old inmate on the same day, the first time a state has scheduled two executions within hours since 2017.
Florida officials plan to carry out two lethal injections on Tuesday, with James Aren Duckett, 68, scheduled for noon at Florida State Prison near Starke, followed several hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone. Duckett was convicted of raping and drowning an 11-year-old girl in 1987 while serving as a police officer, and Occhicone was found guilty of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986. Both men have exhausted appeals in the Florida Supreme Court, though they still had pending petitions before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The executions would be the 11th and 12th carried out in Florida this year and would make the state the first in nearly ten years to schedule two executions on the same day. Governor Ron DeSantis, who is set to leave office in January, has overseen 19 executions in 2025, the highest annual total for a Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. If the Tuesday executions proceed, the total under DeSantis could reach 31 before the end of his term.
Duckett’s attorneys argued that DNA evidence was inconclusive and that he might be innocent, while Occhicone’s lawyers cited age-related health issues, including kidney and prostate problems, as a basis for claiming the execution could be cruel and unusual. The Florida Supreme Court denied both appeals last week.
"Justice delayed is justice denied," Governor DeSantis said at a November 2025 news conference, adding that he would not proceed if he believed a condemned person were innocent.
Advocacy groups such as Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty have urged the governor to halt the executions, saying the schedule reflects an expansion of capital punishment. The state's Department of Corrections notes that executions are performed with a sedative, a paralytic agent, and a drug that stops the heart.
If carried out, Occhicone would become the oldest inmate executed in Florida’s modern history and the second-oldest person executed in the United States since 1976, after an 83-year-old inmate in Alabama in 2018.