STARKE, Fla. (AP) — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history.

Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term, saying too many families have waited too long to see justice. The lethal injections several hours apart were the first nearly back-to-back executions since Arkansas put two men to death three hours apart in 2017.

DeSantis, who has the authority under Florida law to set execution dates, decided earlier this month to carry out both executions on the same day.

Nationwide, the use of the death penalty had been declining for two decades, but that number has ticked up behind the increased pace in Florida.

Man, 80, apologizes for killing his ex-girlfriend's parents

Dominick Anthony Occhicone, the octogenarian, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke after a three-drug injection. His execution came nearly five hours after the former police officer, James Aren Duckett, 68, received a lethal dose in the same death chamber.

The chamber's curtain went up promptly at Occhicone's 6 p.m. scheduled execution hour. He lay strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm, a spiritual adviser near his feet.

Asked if he had any final words, Occhicone said he thanked all of his Christian brothers for visiting him over the years. He also apologized to the family of the victims and to his own family for what he had put them through.

“Sorry for all the hurt I caused,” he said.

“I know it don’t mean much, but I’m sorry,” Occhicone added. “I never meant to do what I did."

The injection began at 6:02 p.m. followed by several minutes of deep breathing. When the breathing slowed, a warden shook him and yelled his name without response.

Occhicone, who was convicted of fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend’s parents in June 1986, is the oldest known prisoner executed in Florida since it began modern record-keeping a century ago.

Nationwide, an older inmate, 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr., received a lethal injection in Alabama in 2018 for a wave of mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.

Afterward, the children of victims Raymond and Martha Artzner released a statement saying their family had come to “the end of a long and painful journey.”

“The years since June 10, 1986, have been filled with sleepless nights, empty chairs at family gatherings, and those one-on-one conversations that were lost,” it read in part. “Today does not erase that pain and it does not undo the harm, but it does close a door and end a chapter in our lives that has just lingered on far too long.”

A former police officer was executed in the afternoon

Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Duckett became the 11th Florida inmate executed this year. He was convicted of raping and drowning 11-year-old Teresa McAbee while he was working as a police officer in central Florida in 1987.

Duckett declined to make a final statement and showed no response several minutes into the execution when the prison warden shook him and shouted his name. He was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m.

Afterward, the girl's relatives spoke of decades of suffering.

“I waited nearly 40 years to have him dead,” Dorthy Tula, the victim's mother, said before breaking down.

“This man took advantage of his badge,” said Tracy Mcfall-Buskirk, the girl's cousin.

Record execution numbers for governor’s final two years

Nationwide, a total of 19 executions including Tuesday's have been carried out this year. Florida leads with 12 executions to date in 2026 — more than all other states combined.

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions last year, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the U.S. reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

Another execution in Florida is set for August.

Many on Florida's death row have been there decades

DeSantis hasn’t said why he scheduled two executions hours apart. And he's rarely commented on the pace of executions, previously noting some on death row had committed crimes as far back as the 1980s.

“Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly," the governor said last year.

Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, the last being in 1964.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied last appeals from both men Tuesday.

All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

____

Associated Press reporter John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.