Prosecutors also put three young women on the stand who testified that they were underage when Duckett sexually harassed or abused them.

Duckett’s attorneys have been working to poke holes in the trial evidence, saying that Teresa’s fingerprints were on the car hood because she sat on it at the Circle K, that a second hair found on the girl’s body was inconsistent with Duckett’s, and that Duckett’s tire tracks were at the scene because drove there after the body was found.

They also argue that the state’s key witness agreed to give bogus testimony in exchange for getting out of jail early and that there was no evidence to corroborate the stories of the three young women who testified that Duckett had been inappropriate with them.

Duckett’s attorneys also argue that there were far likelier suspects in the case, including the teen Teresa was talking to before she vanished and various men who were boyfriends or friends of her mother’s.

“For reasons beyond his control, James Duckett was chosen as the suspect, and other more likely suspects were allowed to walk away,” his attorneys argue in court records. “Rather than find the real perpetrator, the state chose to proceed with a circumstantial evidence case against Mr. Duckett.”

Just before he was sentenced to death, Duckett pleaded with the judge in the case to spare his life.

“I did not do this,” he said, according to court records. “When the person who did this repeats it, I want to see the face of the person telling the victim’s mother, father, sister or brother, ‘I am sorry. We thought we had the right one before.’”

An execution scheduled, then stopped

After spending nearly 40 years on death row, James Duckett’s execution was scheduled for March 31 after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant last month.

Duckett’s attorneys fought to stop the execution so that DNA testing could be conducted on the semen collected from the crime scene. On March 26, the Florida Supreme Court agreed to issue a stay of execution pending results from the testing.

The results, which came in on March 27, were inconclusive, possibly because so little of the DNA collected was left to be analyzed. But Duckett’s attorneys had argued that a different lab would be more likely to extract useable results.

The Florida Supreme Court could have lifted its stay because the initial results were inconclusive. Instead, the court decided to uphold it on March 30 in a 6-1 ruling, stopping Duckett’s execution for now.

Duckett’s attorney, Mary Wells, told USA TODAY that the stay was “a significant step toward preventing the irreversible harm that will result if the State of Florida executes an innocent man.”

“DNA testing … has the potential to conclusively establish Mr. Duckett’s innocence,” she said. “When the outcome of the results is whether a man lives or dies, there is no valid scientific basis for prohibiting a second examiner to analyze the results.”

The state’s Attorney General’s Office had argued in court that the stay should be lifted because the DNA results were inconclusive and that Duckett sought DNA testing far too late.

“Duckett waited until after a warrant was signed to seek DNA testing for a murder he committed over 38 years ago where he knew about the (DNA) slide at least since the relinquishment in 2003,” they wrote. “But he did not seek DNA testing as soon as the science was sufficiently advanced. A truly innocent man would have sought … DNA testing as soon as it was available.”

More: Tennessee plans rare execution of a woman. She’s fighting back.

What happens now?

In its order upholding the execution stay, the Florida Supreme Court ordered Lake County Circuit Judge Brian Welke to provide the higher court with a status report by the end of day on April 2

Welke is expected to decide whether there should be further testing of the DNA. Welke is the judge who initially granted Duckett’s request to test the DNA.

In his dissenting opinion to uphold the stay, Florida Supreme Court Justice Adam Tanenbaum wrote that Duckett’s DNA fight amounts to “a Hail Mary pass” and that given the inconclusive test results, there is “nothing further for (Welke) to do at this point.”

“Indeed, as has been the case for decades, there is no exonerating evidence at all to justify any further delay in the defendant’s execution, which has been a long time coming,” Tanenbaum wrote. “Justice for the victim and her family has been delayed far too long. The defendant’s time is up.”

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers cold case investigations and the death penalty for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.