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Florida
Killer cop or the wrong man? DNA halts Florida execution. For now.
Ex-officer James Duckett had been set to be executed by lethal injection on March 30 for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl while he was on duty in Florida. But DNA testing has stopped it.
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When 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee was kidnapped, raped, strangled and drowned in the small Florida city of Mascotte nearly 40 years ago, a surprising suspect emerged: a rookie cop named James Duckett.
The one undisputed fact of the case is that Duckett was on duty on May 11, 1987, when he encountered Teresa at a convenience store. The little girl had walked there to buy a pencil.
Duckett maintains that he told Teresa that she needed to go home, and that’s the last time he saw her. Prosecutors argue that Duckett was a monster in disguise who abused the badge and brutally raped and killed Teresa before dumping her body in a lake.
Jurors accepted the state’s narrative, convicting Duckett of murder largely based on circumstantial evidence and recommending the death penalty.
Now nearly 40 years later, DNA in the case stands to either save Duckett’s life or seal his fate.
Duckett, 68, had been set to die by lethal injection at a Florida state prison on Tuesday, March 31. But with less than a week to go, the Florida Supreme Court issued a rare stay of execution pending the results of the DNA testing. And on Monday, March 30, the court upheld the stay, effectively stopping any chance that the execution would happen as scheduled.
Though the execution is on hold for now, it’s not on hold for good.
As Duckett awaits his fate, USA TODAY is looking deeper at the case, the recent court actions and why the DNA hasn’t been tested until now.
What happened to Teresa Mae McAbee?
On May 11, 1987, the fates of 29-year-old rookie cop James “Jimmy” Duckett and 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee became intertwined.
Teresa had walked to her local Circle K convenience store to buy a pencil around 10 p.m. in Mascotte, Florida, a rural city just west of Orlando that had fewer than 2,000 residents at the time.
Duckett was on patrol for the Mascotte Police Department. The married father of two sons, who had been on the force for seven months, was making his regular rounds and stopped at Circle K, spotting Teresa talking with a 16-year-old boy outside the store, according to court records.
Duckett has always maintained that he talked to Teresa and the teen, telling each to go home. But the boy and his uncle later said that Duckett put Teresa in his patrol car and drove off.
Teresa’s mother arrived at the Circle K around 11 p.m. looking for her daughter. The store clerk told her that Teresa may have gone with Duckett, and the mother began searching the area. When she couldn’t find Teresa, she contacted police and later filed a missing persons report with Duckett, the only officer on patrol at the time.
The next morning, less than a mile from the Circle K, a fisherman found Teresa’s body in Knight Lake. A medical examiner later found that she had been raped, strangled and was still alive when her attacker drowned her. Bodily fluid, presumably from the killer, was found on her underwear − DNA that was saved.
Duckett became a suspect when a sheriff’s investigator, Sgt. Chuck Johnson, thought the officer was acting nervous at the scene of the body recovery, “was not curious about the death,” and told a “rehearsed-sounding story” about his interaction with Teresa and the events of the night before. Duckett was charged with murder five months later.
What happened at James Duckett’s trial?
At trial, prosecutors called James Duckett a “cold-blooded killer” and said that unlike him, Teresa didn’t have a judge or jury.
“She had a police officer named Duckett pick her up and put her in the car and take her down to Knight Lake, and he sentenced her to be raped, and he sentenced her for threatening to tell on him and taking away his power, his almighty power of the badge,” they told jurors, according to court records. “She threatened to tell when she was hurt … so he sentenced her to die. He served as executioner.”
Among the state’s evidence: a pubic hair found on Teresa that an FBI analyst said was consistent with Duckett’s, Teresa’s fingerprints on the hood of Duckett’s car, tire tracks at the scene of the murder that police say matched Duckett’s patrol car, and a key witness who testified that she saw Duckett drive off with a small person in his patrol car shortly after he spoke with Teresa.
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.”
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.
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Florida
Jury selection continues in fatal boat crash trial of South Florida real estate mogul George Pino
MIAMI — A new group of prospective jurors was questioned Tuesday in the trial of South Florida real estate mogul George Pino, who is charged in connection with a 2022 boat crash that killed a teenager in Miami-Dade County.
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During jury selection in a Miami-Dade courtroom, Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez asked potential jurors what they already knew about the case and whether they had recently seen or heard anything about it.
Several prospective jurors said they knew only basic details, including that a fatal boating crash occurred and that a teenage girl died. Others said they recalled media reports that alcohol may have been involved.
As questioning continued, some prospective jurors disclosed connections to schools and communities tied to the case.
Passengers aboard Pino’s boat included his wife, his teenage daughter and 11 of her friends, many of whom attended private schools in Miami-Dade County.
One prospective juror said they graduated from a local private school around the time of the crash and were familiar with some of the students involved.
Another said references to schools and witnesses brought back memories of seeing posts and articles about the incident shared on social media.
A third said their child participates in youth sports with students from schools connected to the case.
Investigators said the boat struck a channel marker while returning from an outing on Biscayne Bay. Seventeen-year-old Lourdes Academy student Lucy Fernandez drowned after the crash.
Tinkler Mendez also addressed concerns that a prospective juror had been viewing a news report about the case on a cellphone while waiting outside the courtroom.
Another prospective juror reported hearing the report but said it was not loud enough for everyone in the area to hear.
Tinkler Mendez reminded prospective jurors to avoid news coverage and social media discussions related to the case as jury selection continues.
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STARKE, Fla. — A Florida man who confessed to killing his girlfriend’s infant daughter and throwing her body in a pond three decades ago is set to be executed Tuesday evening.
Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, is scheduled to receive a three-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in 1997 for the death a year earlier of 5-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw.
This would be Florida’s eighth execution so far this year, following a record 19 executions in 2025. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was set in 2014 with eight executions.
According to court records, Lukehart was watching his girlfriend’s baby in February 1996 while his girlfriend was caring for her older daughter, who had been ill. At some point, the girlfriend said Lukehart drove away from their Jacksonville home, and she couldn’t find baby Gabrielle. Lukehart called his girlfriend about 30 minutes later and told her to call police because the baby had been kidnapped and he was chasing the kidnapper.
Later that evening, Lukehart was found in a neighboring county after driving his car off the road. During questioning the next day, Lukehart told investigators that Gabrielle died after he dropped the baby on her head and then shook her. He told police that he panicked and threw the baby in a pond. Law enforcement officers searched the pond and found the child’s body.
The Florida Supreme Court denied Lukehart’s appeals last week. His attorneys had claimed that medication he was taking for kidney disease could have a negative reaction with the lethal injection drugs. They also argued that having only a month between the signing of Lukehart’s death warrant and the execution deprived him of his due process.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Lukehart’s final appeal on Monday.
A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with five executions each.
Another execution is planned in Florida later this month. Dusty Ray Spencer, 74, was convicted of fatally stabbing his wife in 1992.
All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
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