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.

  • MiddleAgesModem
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    8 hours ago

    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.

    • HasturInYellow
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      5 minutes ago

      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?