Alarm as Florida rushes to carry out ‘incredibly rare’ double execution
Rights groups condemn secrecy surrounding killings and say hurry to execute raises chance of ‘torturous’ deaths
Florida is preparing on Tuesday to carry out the state’s first double execution within a single day since the start of the modern era of the US death penalty in 1976.
Barring last-minute legal intervention, James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at noon on Tuesday at Florida state prison near Starke. Six hours later, Dominick Occhicone, 80, faces the same fate.
Should both killings be completed, it would be the first time since 2017 that a death penalty state has conducted more than one execution on the same day. On 24 April 2017 Arkansas administered lethal doses to two prisoners, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams, just three hours apart and amid chaotic scenes that suggested the procedures were botched.
In Florida itself, a review by the Associated Press showed that 1964 was the last time there were multiple judicial killing on a single day.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/28/florida-double-executionOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
19 replies
Executing incarcerated 68 and 80 year olds makes me feel much better. Gives me the fuzzies, like napalm in the morning.
Then when you find out they're both brown or black and have been locked up since they were 16 for possession of a gram of really bad weed... that makes me so giddy I positively goose step out to polish muh flag.
James Aren Duckett (born September 4, 1957)[1] is an American convicted child murderer, sex offender, and suspected serial killer sentenced to death in Florida. Duckett, a former police officer under the Mascotte Police Department, was charged with the kidnapping, rape and murder of 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee on May 11, 1987. Duckett was said to have abducted the girl, who was raped and later strangled to death, and her body was found abandoned near a lake. Apart from McAbee's murder, Duckett is also a suspect in the 1987 unsolved murder of 14-year-old Jeanifer Shyan Weldon and 22-year-old Ronette Lynn Peterson in 1986. Duckett was convicted of McAbee's murder and sentenced to death. He is set to be executed on July 28, 2026.
The second one abused his wife then shot her parents to death while drunk.
The argument against capital punishment is not about whether or not the crimes are heinous. It is important to acknowledge how terrible these crimes are to have a moral discussion
Sure, but neither of these people are being put to death for being black/brown or having a bit of weed on them at 16...
You really don't pick up on social cues very well. We were saying this is fucking awful, not commenting on their actual charges.
And reading a person's charges in the US doesn't tell you nearly as much as you seem to think it does, since the countries penal system runs on over charging everyone who can't afford to defend themselves as much as possible then pressuring them into taking a plea deal for reduced sentencing.
I’ll bite …… I don’t pick up on social clues very well. What is the objection to posting the crimes?
Edited above to clarify. Slothrop wasn't really feeling fuzzy and warm at the thought of executing the elderly, I wasn't genuinely goose stepping to polish a flag, and reading the charges against a person doesn't really tell you anything. See: People charged as terrorists for spray painting signs or moving a box of magazines.
Raping and killing a child with evidence of their dead strangled body seems hard to misinterpret, though.
I do understand what you mean about bogus charges like the people who got charged with terrorism for using signal but this is very different.
I've known enough people who spent years in prison for things they genuinely didn't do that unless I actually know all of the relevant details of a case and situation far beyond what can be found in a quick Google search I'm not going to sit on the internet and judge a person. Oddly enough I knew a man who was exonerated after around 15 years in prison for killing his own kid.
It's really easy to read of an awful crime and judge the person accused of it as a monster.
These days we have to worry about the state executions that are instantaneous and arbitrary. It's harder to get worked up over people who've had 40 years of due process.
Pigs have executed 638 people so far in 2026 https://mappingpoliceviolence.us/ They subtract about 3 people from the census every day.
Opposition to the death penalty isn't always based on sympathy for heinous criminals. It's based on the fact that people get exonerated fairly frequently. The judicial system is far from perfect and innocent people do get convicted.
That's my reason for opposing it. I don't think we should accept the occasional execution of an innocent person just to satisfy some abstract sense of justice. It's almost like a modern practice of human sacrifice to some imagined "justice god".
I also don't think another situation being worse means somehow excuses other bad practices.
Only barbarians still use death sentences.
There are quite a few people that I am absolutely certain would make the world a significantly better place for everyone in it, should they be suddenly and violently turned into a liquid.
That said, I don't think the state should be the one doing that. Mob justice has its downsides for sure but I think it has its own place in any society.
Lol, this comment seemed to be going in a sensible direction and then just wildly diverged into sheer lunacy.
Mob "justice" is even worse, by a long shot, than judicial execution. The mob doesn't conduct trials, or review evidence or hold an appeals process. It just kills people and, very frequently, kills people who are not guilty.
Are you suggesting that allowing the rich to control the justice system and convict whoever they like of whatever they like, and can never be held accountable themselves if a sane system?
To me, THIS feels like lunacy. Yeah, mob justice is bad and uncontrollable. But if there is no other mechanism of control over something that ought to be fully under the people's control, is there not a place for it?
There should be a procedure for those who simply existing is a treath, hitler being the most common example. You couldnt imagine a world where he is kept alive and prison at the same time so the only option is to kill him. But that is usually already dealt with extrajudicially. Were all biased, i want the oslo terrorist to die a horrible fucking death and preferably go to hell but someone with a more level headed view will have a thousand arguments against why thats bad and i accept it has to be this way cause we cant judge who lives and who doesnt. As infuriating as it can feel, norway not having a life sentence is the correct approach, someone who has, acknowledged, repented, atoned for and works against their crimes and also reformed should have the right to be free. I still feel like there should be something that draws a line between anyone else and the oslo killer but the problem is all my arguments come from places of utter disgust and hate against him rather than from a logical place.
Absolutely disgusting and barbaric