Stay the Execution of James Duckett

Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Board of Executive Clemency

This execution is stayed as of March 26. 2026. This petition will be updated if that changes. In the meantime, your signatures still matter! Visit fadp.org for the most up-to-date information.

On April 30, the Florida Supreme Court  ruled that James Duckett must be given access to the underlying DNA testing data in his case. The Court found that he has not yet received the complete results of postconviction DNA testing that was ordered after the Governor signed his death warrant on February 27. The case now returns to the circuit court, where the underlying DNA data must be disclosed and further analysis may proceed. The stay of execution remains in place.

Governor DeSantis has signed a death warrant for James Duckett who was sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of Teresa McAbee. His execution is scheduled for Tuesday, March 31 at 6 p.m. Please sign this petition urging the Governor and Florida Board of Executive Clemency to stop his execution.

Florida plans to execute James Duckett even though serious questions remain about the reliability of his conviction and critical evidence has never been fully tested.

Mr. Duckett has spent nearly four decades on death row. He has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested, and the case against him relied entirely on circumstantial evidence that has since been deeply undermined.

The prosecution’s only eyewitness later recanted her testimony, stating that investigators told her what to say and promised favorable treatment in her own criminal case if she cooperated. Without that testimony, the prosecution’s theory collapses.

The forensic evidence presented at trial has also been discredited. The FBI analyst who testified against Mr. Duckett was later found by the U.S. Department of Justice to have repeatedly overstated forensic conclusions and given scientifically unsupported testimony in criminal trials. Government reviews determined Malone’s work contained serious flaws and exaggerated the strength of the hair comparison evidence used to link Mr. Duckett to the crime.

Even more troubling, a previously undisclosed Department of Justice letter questioning Malone’s testimony only surfaced recently — decades after Mr. Duckett’s trial and only after a judge ordered prosecutors to release thousands of pages of records.

A Florida court recently authorized advanced SNP DNA testing, a powerful modern technique capable of identifying unknown contributors to biological evidence and potentially identifying the real perpetrator. Those results were inconclusive, so his lawyers are arguing for additional analysis.

Despite this, the State of Florida is attempting to move forward with an execution.

Once an execution is carried out, the truth can never be discovered.

Florida must not carry out an irreversible punishment while critical evidence remains unresolved.

We urge Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Board of Executive Clemency to stay the execution of James Duckett to allow for a full examination of the DNA evidence in this case.

To: Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Board of Executive Clemency
From: [Your Name]

We stand together to urge you to stop the execution of James Duckett and grant clemency.

The murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee was a horrific crime. Nothing written here diminishes the magnitude of that harm or the grief her family has carried for decades. Her life mattered. Her loss mattered.

But the question before you is not whether the crime was serious. It was. The question is whether the State of Florida should respond to violence with another deliberate act of violence.

James Duckett was sentenced to death under a system the United States Supreme Court has since declared unconstitutional. His jury was divided 8–4.

Even beyond these constitutional concerns, serious questions remain about the reliability of the conviction itself.

Mr. Duckett has maintained his innocence since the beginning of the case. The prosecution’s theory rested on several pieces of evidence that have since come under serious doubt.
The State’s key eyewitness later recanted her testimony, stating that investigators pressured her and suggested what she should say. Without that testimony, the central claim becomes deeply uncertain.

The forensic evidence used at trial also relied on testimony from FBI analyst Michael Malone, whose work was later reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice and found to have repeatedly overstated or misrepresented forensic conclusions in criminal cases across the country. A previously undisclosed Department of Justice letter raising concerns about Malone’s testimony in Mr. Duckett’s case only surfaced decades later.

Most troubling of all, biological evidence from the case has never been fully tested using modern DNA technology.

A court recently authorized advanced DNA testing using a powerful modern method capable of identifying unknown contributors to biological evidence and potentially identifying the true perpetrator. Those results are still pending.

Once an execution is carried out, the truth can never be discovered.

Florida has already seen 30 people exonerated from death row, many through advances in DNA testing and forensic science that did not exist at the time of their trials.

Florida is carrying out executions at a historic pace. Each warrant signed is a conscious decision to expand the reach of state violence. You have the constitutional authority to stop this execution.

Justice is not measured by how many people the State kills. It is measured by whether the State exercises restraint when it has the power to take a life.

We urge you to grant a stay of execution and commute James Duckett’s sentence to life imprisonment.