Florida's Execution Chamber Will Be Especially Busy Tuesday

Florida is set to become the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, planning lethal injections Tuesday for an ex-police officer convicted of a young girl's murder and an octogenarian who would be the second-oldest inmate put to death in modern US history. The planned injections come 18 months after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis began stepping up executions at a rate unseen in modern times in Florida, reports the AP. DeSantis hasn't said why he scheduled two executions six hours apart, and Florida prison officials haven't said whether the timing creates any logistical challenges for staff.

James Aren Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at noon at Florida State Prison near Starke, followed later that day by 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone, who also would become the oldest prisoner executed in Florida's modern history. 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, and Occhicone was convicted of the 1986 killings of his ex-girlfriend's parents. Duckett and Occhicone would become Florida's 11th and 12th inmates to be executed this year. The Florida Supreme Court denied appeals for both men last week. Occhicone's attorneys argued that several age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, could make his execution especially painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment. Both men still have appeals pending before the US Supreme Court.

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 death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1976. The previous high was eight executions set in 2014. When Occhicone's death warrant was signed late last month, his was the only execution scheduled for Tuesday. But after the Florida Supreme Court removed Duckett's stay on July 8, DeSantis signed a new death warrant soon after and added Duckett to Occhicone's execution date, which hadn't been done in Florida in more than 60 years. Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, with the last being on May 12, 1964.

"July 28 represents an unprecedented escalation of Florida's use of the death penalty," the group's executive director, Grace Hanna, said in a statement. "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." Occhicone would become Florida's oldest inmate to be executed, just weeks after two 74-year-old men briefly held that spot, the second man just a week older than the first at his time of death.