Florida to Execute Two Inmates on Same Day, Including Second-Oldest Prisoner in Modern U.S. History

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida is poised to make history Tuesday by becoming the first state in nearly a decade to execute two inmates on the same day, as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis continues an aggressive push to accelerate capital punishment that has drawn both praise and criticism.

The scheduled lethal injections, just six hours apart, come 18 months after DeSantis began scaling up executions at a pace unprecedented in Florida's modern era. While the governor's office has not explained the rationale for the double execution, the move reflects a broader shift in death penalty policy under a leader who has overseen a record number of executions in his final years in office.

James Aren Duckett, 68, is set to die at noon at Florida State Prison near Starke for the 1987 rape and drowning of 11-year-old Angela Bishop. Duckett was a police officer in Bushnell, a small central Florida city, at the time of the crime. Later Tuesday, 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone will be executed for the 1986 murders of his ex-girlfriend's parents, Richard and Mary Hays, in a case that has drawn attention due to his advanced age and health issues.

If carried out, the executions would mark the 11th and 12th under DeSantis this year alone, and raise the total during his final two years in office to 31—a stark contrast to the nine executions during his first six years. The governor, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025, the most by any Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976. The previous high was eight executions in 2014.

Occhicone would become Florida's oldest executed inmate and the second-oldest known in modern U.S. history, after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr., who was executed in Alabama in 2018. Occhicone's attorneys have argued that age-related ailments—including kidney and prostate problems—could make his execution unusually painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment. The Florida Supreme Court denied his appeal last week, and both men have pending appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Duckett had received a temporary reprieve in March when the Florida Supreme Court ordered DNA testing on evidence that could not be analyzed at the time of his original trial due to technological limits. The tests came back inconclusive, neither exonerating Duckett nor definitively linking him to the crime. Judges allowed the jury's verdict to stand, and DeSantis signed a new death warrant soon after the stay was lifted on July 8, adding Duckett to Occhicone's existing execution date—a move not seen in Florida in more than 60 years.

State Department of Corrections records show that multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, with the last being on May 12, 1964. Nationwide, it is not unusual for two states to hold executions on the same date, but it is rare for a single state to conduct two. Before Florida, the most recent was Arkansas in April 2017, and Texas executed two inmates on the same day in 2000.

Advocacy groups have condemned the double execution. "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."

DeSantis has rarely commented on individual executions over the past 18 months, but said at a November 2025 news conference: "Some of these crimes were committed in the '80s. Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly. If I honestly thought someone was innocent, I would not pull the trigger."

The double execution has also reignited debate over carrying out capital punishment on elderly inmates, who may die soon from natural causes. Occhicone's case follows the recent executions of two 74-year-old men in Florida, both of whom briefly held the title of oldest inmate executed by the state. The aging death-row population has prompted renewed questions about the humanity of administering lethal injection to those with significant health complications.

Florida executions are carried out by injection of a sedative, a paralytic, and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.