01 May 2026 :
April 30, 2026 - Florida. James Hitchcock was executed on April 30
Hitchcock, 70, White, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. following a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was convicted of the July 1976 rape and killing of 13-year-old Cynthia Driggers.
The curtain to the death chamber opened promptly at the 6 p.m. execution time. Hitchcock’s entire body was covered in a sheet up to his head. He stared at the ceiling as the team warden made a call, then gave his final statement.
“Just to say goodbye to Joshua my friend. Thanks for all you’ve done,” Hitchcock said without elaborating.
As he spoke, a man in the witness room, raised his hand, and Hitchcock lifted his head to try to see.
Hitchcock blinked rapidly as the drugs began flowing and took several deep breaths. A minute later, his breathing became more shallow and quickly stopped. Minutes into the execution, the team warden briefly flicked Hitchcock‘s face and yelled his name twice and shook his shoulders. Hitchcock didn’t respond, his face slowly turning ashen.
There was no visible reaction from the 28 witnesses nearby. A doctor came in 11 minutes into the execution, checked Hitchcock with a stethoscope and shone a light into his eyes before nodding at the team warden, who declared him dead.
According to court records, on July 31, 1976, Hitchcock raped and murdered 13-year-old Cynthia Driggers, the daughter of his brother. Hitchcock, then 20 and unemployed, had moved into his brother’s suburban Orlando home weeks before the killing occurred.
He told police following his arrest that after drinking beer and smoking marijuana with friends for several hours, he returned to the home, entered the girl’s room and raped her, investigators said. Hitchcock recanted during his trial and blamed his brother instead.
Convicted of first-degree murder, he was sentenced to death in 1977.
His death sentence was overturned thrice, and reinstated after each re-sentencing trial.
On April 22, 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the death sentence of Hitchcock, finding that the judge had erred in limiting the defence from presenting mitigatory evidence in his original trial.
In 1988 Hitchcock was again sentenced to death, after a jury vote of 7–5.
On June 30, 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentences of Hitchcock and five other inmates on the fact that the juries in these cases made use of an improper standard to mete out their respective death sentences. On January 28, 1993, the Florida Supreme Court ordered that Hitchcock should be re-sentenced for the murder of Driggers and remanded his case back to the trial courts. That same year, a third jury unanimously ordered the death penalty for Hitchcock.
On March 21, 1996, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of Hitchcock once again, after they found that the sentencing of Hitchcock was erroneously affected by the unverified child sex allegations against Hitchcock in his previous round of re-sentencing back in 1993, which made it prejudicial and denied him his right to fair and impartial sentencing.
In 1996 Hitchcock was again sentenced to death after a jury vote of 10–2.
On Thursday morning (April 30), the U.S. Supreme Court denied Hitchcock’s final appeal.
Hitchcock becomes the 6th person to be executed in Florida this year, the 131st since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1979, the 9th in the United States in 2026, and the 1,663rd since the country resumed executions in 1977.
https://apnews.com/article/florida-execution-james-ernest-hitchcock-51578f0febef66cd973b07c0d130c89b
