Florida put two men to death by lethal injection on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, at Florida State Prison near Starke. This was the first time any U.S. state carried out two executions in a single day in nearly a decade. James Aren Duckett, 68, was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m. Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, followed at 6:13 p.m. Both died in the same death chamber, nearly five hours apart. Lethal injection is the most common method of execution in the U.S. — it involves injecting drugs that cause the person to die. (WFLA; The Guardian)

Governor Ron DeSantis decided earlier in July to schedule both executions on the same day. He signed Duckett's death warrant — the official document that sets an execution date — on February 27, 2026, originally setting the execution for March 31 at 6:00 p.m. He signed Occhicone's warrant on June 26, scheduling it for July 28 at 6:00 p.m. The convergence was deliberate, not a calendrical accident. (Florida Courts docket)

The last time a state executed two inmates in one day was in Arkansas in 2017, when two men were put to death three hours apart. Florida had not carried out a same-day double execution in 60 years. (AP News; The Guardian)

Duckett, a former police officer, was convicted of raping and drowning 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in 1987. His attorneys said he was innocent and challenged how the state handled DNA evidence. Duckett filed a request for DNA testing on March 5, 2026, more than four months before the Florida Supreme Court noted he was aware of the items he sought to test. The court declined to step in the previous week, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final appeal on July 28. Duckett declined to make a final statement. (Florida Supreme Court opinion; The Guardian)

Occhicone was convicted in 1986 of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents. After his death warrant was signed on June 26, he filed a request for the court to reconsider his case, which was ultimately denied. The Florida Supreme Court declined to step in, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final appeal on July 28. In his last words, Occhicone apologized to the victims' family and his own, saying: "I never meant to do what I did." (The Guardian)

At 80, Occhicone was the oldest prisoner executed in Florida's history since modern record-keeping began a century ago. He was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history, behind Walter Moody Jr., who was 83 when Alabama executed him in 2018 for a wave of mail bombs in 1989.

After Duckett's execution, Teresa McAbee's mother, Dorthy Tula, and cousin, Tracy Mcfall-Buskirk, addressed witnesses. Tula said she "waited nearly 40 years to have him dead." (The Guardian)

The double execution fits a broader pattern. Since the start of 2025, Florida has carried out nearly half of all state executions across the United States. As of July 28, before the two lethal injections, 17 executions had been conducted nationwide in 2026, with Florida accounting for more than all other states combined. After Tuesday, that margin widened further.

The broader context here is what this means for the death penalty in America. DeSantis's decision to put two executions on a single day suggests he wants to speed up the pace of executions in Florida, which was already higher than most states. The governor has sole authority in Florida to sign death warrants and set execution dates. The scheduling choice — placing an 80-year-old and a 68-year-old in the same chamber hours apart — was something he chose to do, not something the process required.

The legal pathways for both men also closed in parallel. Both had appeals denied by the U.S. Supreme Court on the day of execution, after the Florida Supreme Court declined to step in the prior week. Duckett's claim of innocence and his challenge over DNA evidence, and Occhicone's request to have his case reconsidered, were each rejected without relief. The speed of the final denials — same-day rulings from the high court — reflects a long-standing pattern: last-minute appeals rarely stop an execution once a death warrant is active.

Florida's dominance of the national execution count raises the question of whether other states will follow its lead. Arkansas's 2017 double execution happened because the state's execution drugs were about to expire — a practical constraint, not a policy choice. Florida's 2026 double execution had no such stated reason. The process went ahead without reported complication for either inmate.

The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bans "cruel and unusual punishment." For people who follow legal challenges based on that amendment, the advanced ages of both men — and Occhicone's place in the record books — add to a small but growing set of cases where courts have declined to treat old age or decades spent in prison as reasons to stop an execution. Neither man's legal team made age a central focus of their final appeals, but the trend fits a death row population that has grown older since the peak sentencing years of the 1980s and 1990s.