Busiest US death chamber: Florida executes 2 men in a day, including an octogenarian - AP News

What the report says

Associated Press reported that Florida carried out two executions on Tuesday at Florida State Prison near Starke, making it the first state in almost 10 years to put two prisoners to death on the same day. The men were James Aren Duckett, 68, a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl, and Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, who was convicted of fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend’s parents in June 1986.

Occhicone was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. after a three-drug lethal injection, AP reported. His execution occurred nearly five hours after Duckett was executed in the same chamber. AP said Occhicone was the second-oldest known inmate to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Before his death, he thanked Christian visitors and apologized to the victims’ family and his own family, according to AP’s account.

The Florida Supreme Court had rejected appeals from both men the previous week. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has authority under state law to schedule executions, set the two death dates earlier in the month. AP reported that DeSantis has accelerated executions over the past 18 months, making Florida’s death chamber the busiest in the nation late in his final term.

The back-to-back executions stand out amid a longer-term national decline in capital punishment, though AP noted that execution totals have risen recently with Florida’s increased pace. The last nearly consecutive same-day executions cited by AP were in Arkansas in 2017. Photos and video distributed with the report showed law enforcement outside the prison and death penalty protesters demonstrating in Tavares, Florida.