After nearly four decades of appeals, a former Florida police officer is scheduled to die by lethal injection on July 28, 2026, for the 1987 murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee. James Duckett, now 68, has maintained his innocence since his conviction, and the case remains deeply controversial
The execution is set for noon at Florida State Prison in Raiford.
Duckett will be strapped to a gurney in a small windowless room as witnesses watch through glass. Chemicals will enter his bloodstream and stop his heart, ending a story that has haunted the small town of Mascotte for 39 years.
What makes this case different from nearly every other execution in America this year is that James Duckett was a police officer.
The victim was an 11-year-old girl. And to this day, attorneys, advocates, and even some who worked the case question whether the state got the right man
Mascotte, Florida, is a quiet citrus community about 45 minutes west of Orlando.
In 1987, it had one police department and a handful of officers. Everyone knew everyone. James Duckett was a 29-year-old rookie patrolling alone on the night shift when everything changed
On the night of May 11, 1987, Teresa McAbee walked to the Circle K convenience store a few hundred feet from her home. She needed a pencil for her math homework. She never made it back.
By morning, her body was found in a lake less than a mile away.
She had been raped, strangled, and drowned. The last confirmed adult to have contact with her that night was the man wearing the badge.
Investigators pieced together that Duckett had seen Teresa outside the store with a 16-year-old boy and, according to witnesses, put her in his patrol car.
Duckett claimed he simply told her to go home. Yet he was the one who filed the missing person report on the girl he had last been seen driving away with.
He refused help from his police chief that night and did not post a flyer at the Circle K.
The next morning, Teresa’s body was pulled from Night Lake. There was no confession and no eyewitness to the murder itself.
But investigators built a case on tire tracks, fingerprints, and hair analysis that they believed pointed to one man.
Tire tracks near the body matched an unusual set of snow tires mistakenly installed on Duckett’s patrol vehicle. Fingerprints from both Duckett and Teresa were found on the hood of his car.
A palm print also tied him to the scene. An FBI examiner testified pubic hairs were microscopically consistent.
That hair testimony became one of the most contested pieces of evidence.
Hair comparison analysis of that kind has since been widely discredited as a forensic science. It is no longer considered reliable enough to support a conviction on its own in most courts today.
Duckett was not arrested immediately.
It took five months and a grand jury before he was indicted for first-degree murder in October 1987. At trial in early 1988, prosecutors sought the death penalty against a man who had worn a badge in the same community months earlier.
The defense argued that Teresa’s fingerprints on the hood could be explained by an innocent chat.
They noted a second hair found on her body did not match Duckett. They said the tire tracks proved only that he drove near the lake after the body was found during a search.
The jury convicted Duckett on May 10, 1988, and he was sentenced to death on June 30.
He was 30 years old. Now he is 68, having spent far more of his life on death row than he ever spent free as a police officer.
For almost four decades, Duckett has said the same thing: he didn’t do it.
His attorneys say the state’s key witness later admitted she testified in exchange for early release from jail. That testimony, they argue, was fabricated for freedom.
The hair match testimony from FBI examiner Michael Malone has not aged well.
Malone’s work in multiple cases came under scrutiny, and hair comparison analysis is now widely discredited. Duckett’s attorneys argue the science that helped convict him would not hold up under current standards.
At trial, three young women testified that Duckett had behaved inappropriately toward them.
His attorneys say those claims were not independently corroborated and were used to paint a character portrait rather than prove what happened the night Teresa died.
Duckett’s legal team has pointed to other potential suspects, including the 16-year-old boy Teresa was with and men connected to her mother. They argue investigators fixated on Duckett because he was a police officer and did not pursue other leads with the same intensity.
Then there is the DNA. In the final months before his originally scheduled execution, a judge granted Duckett’s request to test biological evidence from Teresa’s clothing. Using modern DNA technology that did not exist in 1988, the results were supposed to settle the question once and for all.
A stay of execution was issued in March 2026 specifically to allow this testing. The results came back inconclusive. Duckett’s legal team argues the outcome was about how the testing was handled, not what the DNA could show.
They say the state chose the laboratory and the testing method, which was not capable of more advanced whole genome analysis that might have produced a clearer answer. The state disagrees, arguing the conviction was sound and that inconclusive does not mean exculpatory.
In July 2026, the Florida Supreme Court lifted the stay.
Governor Ron DeSantis signed a new death warrant, and a new date was set for July 28. Duckett’s attorneys called it particularly shameful that the execution was scheduled just two weeks after the DNA results came back.
If James Duckett is executed on July 28, he will not die alone that day.
Six hours after his scheduled noon execution, 80-year-old Dominic Aquacone is set to die in the same chamber for a 1986 double murder. It will be the first time Florida executes two people on the same day since 1964.
This execution would also mark Florida’s 11th of the year under Governor DeSantis, who oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025.
That is more than any governor in the state’s modern history. The previous high was eight in a single year.
No confirmed final statement or last meal details have been released yet.
Those will become public on July 28 if the execution proceeds. Duckett’s legal team has said they intend to appeal to the United States Supreme Court before any execution can move forward.
Whether that appeal succeeds, fails, or simply runs out of time before noon on the 28th remains unknown.
James Duckett has spent more than half his life on death row, repeating three words for 39 years: I didn’t do it.
The state of Florida has said the jury got it right. The tires matched.
The fingerprints were there. The hair evidence, however outdated now, convinced 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt in 1988. The DNA testing that was supposed to settle the question came back with no clear answer.
In eight days, the state plans to give James Duckett a lethal injection for the murder of an 11-year-old girl who only wanted to buy a pencil for her homework. The question this case leaves behind is not about Duckett alone.
When physical evidence is old, when forensic methods have since been discredited, and when new testing comes back inconclusive, how sure does a state need to be before it decides a case is finally closed?
That question hangs over the execution chamber in Raiford.
