An 80-year-old man will become the second-oldest to be executed in modern US history – decades after he brutally murdered the parents of his ex-girlfriend.
Dominick Anthony Occhicone is scheduled today to become the oldest person in Florida history – and the second in US national history – to be executed by the state as it continued a deadly streak of killing condemned prisoners. The country has carried out 17 executions in total this year, with Florida carrying out more than every other state combined.
The elderly man, who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend Anita Gerrity’s parents in 1986, is set to die by lethal injection at 6pm local time, barring any last-minute developments.
Occhicone had made a last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court to intervene in his death sentence, which was denied by Florida’s Supreme Court last week. His lawyers had argued that the inmate was suffering from a series of age-related ailments, among them kidney and prostate problems, which would make his execution especially painful.
This, they argued, would constitue a cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited under Florida’s state constitution, which bars officials from inflicting a “superaddition” of terror, pain, or disgrace on an executee.
A Florida prison official said on Tuesday morning that the department was confident in its readiness to carry out Occhicone’s execution. All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
If his execution proceeds as planned, Occhicone would become the state’s oldest inmate to be executed just weeks after two 74-year-old men briefly held that spot, the second man just a week older than the first at his time of death.
Occhicone also would become the second-oldest prisoner known to be put to death in modern US history after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr was executed in Alabama in 2018 for a wave of southern mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.
Occhicone sat on death row for 40 years, and is the last remaining member of his immediate family, members of whom previously said they noticed in him a rage they believed made him a “time bomb” following his conviction for murder.
In 1986, he had told Ms Gerrity he would harm her parents, Raymond and Martha Artzner, or children after appearing at her home in Holiday, Florida. Ms Gerrity refused to speak to him, and when her father went outside their home to confront Occhicone, he grinned at Ms Gerrity while murdering him.
Attorneys wrote in a statement of fact presented to the court: “Occhicone pointed a gun at Artzner, turned to Anita, and grinned as he shot Artzner in the neck.”
Occhicone then broke through the home’s locked door in pursuit of Gerrity, who escaped with her daughter. Occhicone then turned the gun on her mother Martha, shooting her four times and killing her at the scene. The killer was arrested on the same day, and was sentenced to life in prison and death for their murders in 1986.
His execution was condemned as “cruel and unusual” by the Floridians For Alternatives to the Death Penalty, who opposed it on the basis of his persistent health troubles.
Grace Hannah, executive director of the organisation, said in a statement the move was an “affront to the conscience” of those involved, saying: “This is cruel and unusual punishment and an affront to the conscience of everyone involved. He is 80 years old. He looks like he is 80 years old and has the health problems of an 80-year-old.”

source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/death-row-oldest-person-florida-37487865