(CNN) — Two Florida death row inmates are scheduled to be executed hours apart on Tuesday, which would mark the first time in more than six decades the state puts to death multiple people within a single day, as state officials continue to ramp up executions.
“I’m not shocked anymore by the number of death warrants that are being signed, but it struck me as a kind of rupture to the system that we would execute two people within six hours from one another,” said Father Dustin Feddon, a Catholic priest who has been visiting prisoners on Florida’s death row for more than a decade.
Feddon currently ministers to James Duckett, who is scheduled to be executed at noon on Tuesday. Duckett has spent more than three decades on death row after being convicted of murdering 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in 1987.
Hours after Duckett’s death, the state plans to execute Dominick Occhicone, an 80-year-old man who would be the second octogenarian ever executed in the US death penalty’s modern era, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). He was convicted of double-murder in 1987 for killing his former girlfriend’s parents, Raymond and Martha Artzner.
The scheduling of two executions – both via lethal injection – in one day comes as Florida has accelerated its pace of executions, even as other states have abolished or paused the practice. Under the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida executed 19 death row inmates in 2025 – a record high, and more than double the state’s previous record in modern history, according to DPIC. It has already put 10 prisoners to death this year.
“This administration is the most active death penalty administration we’ve ever seen,” Maria DeLiberato, senior counsel at the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, told CNN.
The recent increase concerns advocates in part because Florida leads the nation in death row exonerations, DPIC data shows: Since 1973, 30 people on Florida’s death row have been freed after serving time for a crime they didn’t commit.
When asked about the schedule and increased pace of executions, a spokesperson for the governor pointed to comments he had previously made in which he expressed a belief the death penalty is an “appropriate punishment for the worst offenders” that could be a “strong deterrent.”
“There’s victims’ families that are wanting to see justice, that I’m doing my part to deliver that,” he said in November 2025.
CNN was unable to reach the families of Duckett’s and Occhicone’s victims for comment.
Carrying out multiple executions within a day is rare in the modern era, with only two states doing so in the past 26 years: Arkansas in 2017 and Texas in 2000. Florida hasn’t executed more than one person in a single day since 1964, according to the state’s correctional records.
Advocates say putting two men to death hours apart could put more stress on the execution process, increasing the risk of potential complications.
“To add in that kind of pressure in Florida, where already there have been more executions in that one state alone than there have been in the rest of the US this year – it’s asking for more problems,” said Maya Foa, the CEO of Reprieve, an international nonprofit organization that opposes the death penalty.
Both inmates have filed lawsuits seeking to halt their executions, including one that argues they could suffer so-called “botched” executions because of the compressed timeline. Those appeals remain pending.
Courts have upheld both inmates’ sentences
Duckett and Occhicone were both convicted by juries, and appellate courts have denied multiple attempts to overturn their death sentences – although Duckett has maintained his innocence.
Duckett, a former police officer in Mascotte, Florida, was the last person seen with 11-year-old Teresa McAbee, whose body was later found in a lake, according to court documents.
The medical examiner determined she had been sexually assaulted, strangled and drowned. Circumstantial evidence – including Duckett’s and Teresa’s “comingled fingerprints” on his patrol car and unique tire tracks found at the murder scene that matched his vehicle’s – implicated Duckett as the murderer, the Florida Supreme Court said in a ruling this month.
The court recently cleared the way for Duckett’s execution after post-conviction DNA testing results – which his attorneys claimed could have demonstrated his innocence – came back inconclusive. His attorneys claim the state chose a laboratory that could not perform the appropriate testing.
“The State’s duty is to ensure that justice is done, and not rush to kill in a case with such serious doubts over guilt,” his defense attorneys said in a statement. “We are committed to seeking every avenue of relief for Mr. Duckett ahead of his scheduled July 28 execution so that the State of Florida does not execute an innocent man.”
Occhicone was sentenced to death after he was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986. After his former girlfriend refused to talk to him, he cut the telephone lines to the family’s home and fatally shot both Raymond and Martha Artzner, according to court documents.
Attorneys for Occhicone declined to comment when reached by CNN.
If Occhicone is put to death on Tuesday, the 80-year-old will be the oldest inmate executed in Florida, surpassing two 74-year-olds who were put to death just weeks ago.
He recently argued his execution should be called off because it would violate his Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, due in part to his age and related health complications – an argument the state Supreme Court rejected last week.
But Feddon, the priest, agreed with Occhicone’s argument, calling the recent executions in Florida “unconscionable.”
Feddon, who is against the death penalty, considers it “even more cruel and unusual” to execute “people that are already vulnerable and frail physically, mentally, because of their age,” he said.
“It’s almost as though the state, maybe, or some in the state do not want these men to escape execution by way of natural death, and that to me is deeply troubling as well,” he said. “That’s something that I think that we have to just examine our own conscience as to the motivation for signing a death warrant for an 80-year-old man.”
Florida’s pace contributed to national jump in executions
After the US Supreme Court reinstated use of the death penalty in 1976, executions peaked in 1999, when nearly 100 people were put to death nationwide.
Since then, use of the death penalty in America has generally declined, with a dwindling number of jurisdictions responsible for a growing portion of executions.
But the nationwide total last year nearly doubled compared to the year prior, with 11 states executing 47 inmates – 19 of whom were in Florida, DPIC data shows. And more than half of the executions that have taken place this year occurred in Florida, which has already put 10 inmates to death, according to the organization.
“The pace of executions and the signing of death warrants is very different to the national picture,” said Foa, the CEO of Reprieve. “This is an execution spree at a grand scale.”
Florida is one of the few states where the governor has sole authority to issue a death warrant, the legal document that sets an inmate’s execution date, according to the DPIC. Allowing the executive branch to handle the process with little input from the judiciary creates a secretive system that is ripe for abuse, advocates said.
“For all we know it could be the governor throwing darts at a dartboard, spinning a roulette wheel,” said DeLiberato, who is also the legal and policy director for Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “(It) should be a very transparent process and it’s not. But because it’s not, that’s what we’re left to speculate with. We really have no idea.”
DeSantis – who was first elected governor in 2018 and unsuccessfully ran for president in 2024 – has ramped up executions recently, which DeLiberato said falls in line with President Donald Trump’s calls to expand the death penalty.
“All appearances seem to indicate that Governor DeSantis and his administration is using the death penalty and using this incredible, unrelenting pace of executions to bolster his political future,” she said.
DeSantis previously said executions started rising years after he first took office because his administration had to get its “sea legs” and that the state’s corrections department was impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. He said over the years, his administration heard from some victims’ families, and the governor felt he was “letting some of them down.”
“There’s a saying, ‘Justice delayed is justice denied,’” he said last year. “And so I felt that I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly and promptly.”
‘It keeps accelerating even more’
The inmates living on death row are acutely aware of the escalation, advocates said, and have started to recognize patterns indicating when a new death warrant may be served – such as hearing a distinctive jingle of keys down the hallway, or recognizing an officer in a particular uniform.
“Most of these men are very aware that not only has it (been) accelerating, but with executing two men on the same day, it keeps accelerating even more,” Feddon said.
The priest, like he has many times before, will be in the “death chamber” with Duckett during his final moments on Tuesday, should his execution proceed.
“I’ll sit next to James with my hand on his leg, the bottom half of his leg, and he and I will undoubtedly pray a little bit together,” Feddon said. “And then I’ll begin the prayers of what we pray in the Catholic Church, the commendation for the dying, the prayers for the dying.”
He will bring communion and oil, which is used to anoint people who are preparing to die in the sacrament of last rites.
“Oftentimes I’ll think, ‘Why are we as a state still choosing to answer violence by killing people?’” the priest said. “And yet at the same time, I’m able to draw on some degree of consolation, trusting that the God who is infinitely merciful is present to James and to myself.”
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