Overview
- The executions, which took place Tuesday, July 28, 2026, were of James Aren Duckett, 68, pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m., and Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m., both at Florida State Prison near Starke.
- Duckett’s execution proceeded after the Florida Supreme Court lifted a prior stay that had allowed DNA testing of decades‑old evidence, with those tests returning inconclusive results that neither proved his innocence nor directly tied him to the crime.
- Occhicone became the oldest person executed in Florida’s modern records and had received a non‑unanimous jury recommendation of death at his trial, a 7–5 vote that would not meet the state’s newer eight‑juror threshold.
- Florida has sharply increased executions under Governor DeSantis, accounting for the majority of U.S. state executions in 2026 with 12 carried out so far, and the state has another execution scheduled for August 18.
- Catholic bishops, death‑penalty groups and legal advocates criticized the compressed schedule, secrecy around procedures, use of paralytics in lethal injections and the risk of wrongful or painful executions while some victims’ families said the deaths brought long‑delayed closure.