Gov. Ron DeSantis predicted that his administration will set a new state record for capital punishment Tuesday night, noting that he “presided over two executions in the same day,” a historic feat in Florida.
James Aren Duckett and Dominick Anthony Occhicone died by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison.
Duckett, a former police officer, kidnapped, raped, and murdered an 11-year-old child in 1987. Occhicone killed his ex-fiancée’s parents 40 years ago.
DeSantis is close to the record. Thirty-nine people have been put to death with his authorization. Gov. Albert Gilchrist is said to be responsible for 43 between 1909 and 1912.
Speaking to the Florida Sheriffs’ Association, DeSantis said he didn’t take “joy” in executions, but said the pace was sped up because of a pandemic pause.
“So it’s a weighty thing, but I’ll tell you, when we had COVID start, kind of all the normal operations kind of got upended. It was a lot of unknowns. We were navigating a lot of things. And we kind of got off our schedule there on what we were doing with capital punishment.”
Keeping the rights of victims’ families in mind, he said the state had to “get cracking here” and expedite the pace of executions to serve the interests of justice.
“I think we’ll probably end up having done more than any administration in the history of the state of Florida. And I’m not, like, taking pride in that because it’s a weighty thing, but to me, as we move through those and bring justice, that makes a big difference for a lot of people out there who suffered really, really serious tragedies.”
DeSantis successfully sought to lower the threshold for state execution from unanimity to a supermajority, a change that became law in 2023. He argued that “we can’t be in a situation where one person can just derail this.”
That same year, execution was made legal for people convicted of capital sexual battery on children 12 years of age and under.
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