Dorothy Tula waited 39 years for the man who ra**d and drowned her 11-year-old daughter to face justice.
Tuesday, DeSantis made it happen – along with a second execution six hours later, something Florida hadn't done since 1964.
Teresa's mother walked out of Florida State Prison and said one sentence before she broke down sobbing – and it told you everything you need to know about America's justice system.
A Cop Who Preyed on a Child He Swore to Protect
On May 11, 1987, 11-year-old Teresa McAbee walked to a convenience store in Mascotte, Florida, to buy a pencil.
She was last seen alive getting into a police patrol car.
The man behind the wheel was James Duckett – the only officer on duty that night, a rookie cop who witnesses watched drive away with the little girl.
Investigators found Teresa's body the next morning in a nearby lake.
She had been sexually assaulted, strangled, and drowned.
Duckett spent the next 39 years insisting he was innocent, filing lawsuit after lawsuit, and collecting a taxpayer-funded roof over his head while Teresa's family buried their grief alongside her.
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The DNA test his lawyers demanded as a last-ditch delay came back inconclusive – and the Florida Supreme Court still denied every appeal.
At 1:19 p.m. Tuesday, justice arrived.
Dorothy Tula – Teresa's mother – tried to speak to reporters afterward.
She got one sentence out: "I've been waiting 40 years to have him dead."
Then she couldn't continue.
Her aunt finished: "Maybe she would've been a doctor. Maybe she would've been the next president. We never got the chance to find that out because this bastard took her away from us."
Florida Just Executed 30 People While Every Other State Combined Executed 35
At 6:13 p.m., 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone was executed by lethal injection, becoming the second-oldest prisoner executed in modern U.S. history.
Occhicone had shown up drunk at his ex-girlfriend's parents' house in the middle of the night, disabled the phone line so they had no way to call for help, then shot her father in the chest and put four bullets into her mother.
His only final words were an apology: "I know it don't mean much, but I'm sorry."
The double execution was the first in Florida since May 12, 1964 – and the first time any state had carried out two executions in a single day since Arkansas did it in 2017.
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It marked the 39th and 40th executions under Ron DeSantis – numbers that would have seemed impossible just two years ago.
Florida has executed 30 people since January 2025 while every other state in the country combined has carried out 35 over the same period.
In 2025 alone, DeSantis oversaw 19 executions – more than double the previous Florida record of eight and more than any governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
When pressed on the accelerated pace, he has kept it simple: "Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly."
What the Left Gets Wrong About All of This
Death penalty opponents showed up outside Florida State Prison on Tuesday – roughly 50 protesters, mostly church members and anti-death-penalty activists.
One 28-year-old demonstrator told reporters she doesn't think "the state should have that right."
Here's a better question: Did Teresa McAbee have a right to walk home from a convenience store?
Did Raymond and Martha Artzner have a right to sleep in their own house without being shot to death?
The same people who weep for killers on death row never march for the families who spent decades waiting for justice while lawyers filed motion after motion.
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Dorothy Tula didn't get 39 years with her daughter.
She got 39 years without her.
DeSantis didn't invent this approach to justice.
He just finally had the backbone to execute it.
The families outside that prison on Tuesday weren't celebrating death – they were marking the end of an agonizing wait.
And if the Left wants to argue with that, they can explain it to Dorothy Tula.
Sources:
- Florida Department of Corrections, Execution Records, July 28, 2026.
- Office of State Attorney Bill Gladson, "Statement on the Execution of James Duckett," Fifth Judicial Circuit, July 28, 2026.
- "Florida Carries Out First Double Execution in More Than 60 Years," Fox 13 Tampa Bay, July 29, 2026.
- "Florida Executes Two Men Hours Apart," Associated Press via ABC7, July 28, 2026.
- "Double Execution: First 2 Inmates Executed in One Day," USA TODAY / Yahoo News, July 28, 2026.
