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.
