The last meals of two Florida death row inmates executed less than five hours apart have been revealed –– after the state became the first in nearly a decade to carry out a double execution in one day.
Former police officer James Duckett, 68, and Dominick Occhicone, who at 80 became the state’s oldest prisoner in modern history to be executed, died by lethal injection Tuesday in the same death chamber at Florida state prison near Starke.
Duckett, who was sentenced to death for raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl while on duty near Orlando in 1987, asked for eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits and chocolate milk for his last meal, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Occhicone, a murderer who gunned down his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986 in Holiday, just north of Clearwater, requested eggplant parmesan, a salad, garlic bread and a Pepsi, according to the outlet.
James Aren Duckett (left) and Dominick Anthony Occhicone were executed on the same day.Florida Department of Corrections via AP
The last state to hold back-to-back executions in one day was Arkansas in April 2017 and the last time two inmates were executed on the same day in Florida was in 1964.
Duckett was the 11th and Occhicone the 12th inmates executed in Florida this year after the US Supreme Court on Tuesday denied their appeals and requests for stays of execution.
Occhicone is now the second oldest prisoner known to have been put to death in modern US history.
Both of the inmates woke up in death watch cells at 4:45 a.m. Tuesday, a Florida Department of Corrections spokesperson told the Tampa Bay Times.
Duckett said “No sir” when asked if he wanted to make a final statement and about four minutes after the three-𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 injection began, the prison warden shook him and shouted his name, receiving no response.
He was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m.
His attorney, Mary Elizabeth Wells, previously said that he had “consistently maintained his innocence” and blasted Florida’s handling of DNA evidence.
But relatives of his victim, Teresa McAbee, spoke of their relief at the sentence being carried out after decades of pain following her brutal death.
“I waited nearly 40 years to have him dead,” the victim’s mom, Dorthy Tula, said before breaking down.
“This man took advantage of his badge,” said Tracy Mcfall-Buskirk, the girl’s cousin.
Teresa Mae McAbee was kidnapped, raped and murdered by Duckett.Family handout
Duckett was the sole police officer on patrol duty in Mascotte, near Orlando, on the evening of May 11, 1987, and witnesses said they saw McAbee getting into his patrol car before her mom reported her missing hours later.
Her body was found in a nearby lake the next morning, with DNA and hair collected from the girl’s body found to be probable matches to Duckett.
Fingerprints matching Duckett and the victim were found on his patrol car, according to investigators.
The second execution got underway at the scheduled hour of 6 p.m., with Occhicone strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm and a spiritual adviser nearby.
“Sorry for all the hurt I caused,” Occhicone said when asked if he wanted to make a statement.
“I know it don’t mean much, but I’m sorry. I never meant to do what I did.”
He also thanked all of his Christian brothers for visiting him over the years.
Occhicone spent nearly four decades on death row after being sentenced in the murders of Raymond and Martha Artzner at a home in Holiday on June 10, 1986.
He had shown up to the property where his former girlfriend, Anita Gerrety, was living with her parents and two children — but after she refused to speak with him, he returned with a handgun, according to investigators.
Occhicone then cut the phone lines and shot the Artzners while Gerrety fled with her daughter.
He did not deny the shootings but his legal team argued at trial that the slayings were not premeditated.
Lawyers for Occhicone, who would have turned 81 next month, had argued that executing him was “cruel and unusual punishment” due to his age and condition, and therefore unconstitutional.
The oldest prisoner known to have been executed in US history is Walter Moody Jr., who was put to death at 83 in Alabama in 2018 after being convicted over a mail bomb campaign in 1989 that killed a federal judge and a civil rights attorney.
Earlier this month, Dennis Sochor briefly became the eldest inmate executed in Florida when he was put to death aged 74 for killing a woman he met at a New Year’s Eve party in the first hours of 1982.
Another 74-year-old inmate, Dusty Ray Spencer — who was just one week younger than Sochor at time of execution — was put to death in June.
Almost half of the executions carried out across the US since the beginning of 2025 have been in Florida.
With Post wires
