Six of seven Florida Supreme Court justices voted Monday to keep the execution of former Mascotte police officer James Duckett on hold, denying the state's request to lift a stay even after new DNA testing failed to clear the man convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl nearly four decades ago.
Duckett, now 68, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday. Instead, the high court gave a lower court time to review what it called "successive claims" tied to the DNA evidence and ordered status updates on any outstanding issues by Thursday, April 2.
The ruling leaves Florida in an uncomfortable limbo. The DNA results were not exculpatory, they were inconclusive. Duckett was not cleared. But neither did the testing produce the definitive confirmation the state wanted before proceeding. And so a man who has spent roughly 37 years on death row for one of central Florida's most disturbing crimes remains there, his fate unresolved.
The crime dates to May 11, 1987. Duckett, then 29 and a uniformed officer with the Mascotte Police Department, was seen questioning a young girl at a convenience store near Orlando. He placed her in his patrol car, the New York Post reported, arguing it was past curfew.
That girl was Teresa McAbee. She had gone to the store that night and never made it home. Fox 35 Orlando reported at the time on her disappearance.
The next morning, Teresa's body was found in Knight Lake, less than a mile from the convenience store. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled, and drowned.
Duckett was the last person seen with her. The evidence against him was largely circumstantial but pointed in one direction. Teresa's fingerprints were found on the hood of his patrol car. Tire tracks at the lake matched the Mascotte Police Department's "mud and snow" tires. And Duckett's radio logs showed a gap of more than one hour, a stretch of silence with no calls, no check-ins, no explanation.
An FBI expert also testified at trial that a pubic hair recovered at the scene matched Duckett's.
Hair microscopy, the forensic technique used to link Duckett to the crime scene, has since fallen into disrepute. The FBI itself acknowledged years ago that its examiners overstated the reliability of microscopic hair comparisons in hundreds of cases. That shift in scientific consensus gave Duckett's defense team an opening.
As part of his appeals process, Duckett sought DNA testing of biological material recovered from Teresa McAbee's underwear. He argued the results could exonerate him. A circuit court granted the request, the Associated Press reported, and the Florida Supreme Court issued a stay to allow the testing to proceed.
The results came back Friday. They were inconclusive.
That word, inconclusive, is doing a lot of work. It does not mean Duckett was excluded as a contributor. It does not mean someone else was identified. It means the biological material, nearly 40 years old, did not yield a clear DNA profile one way or the other.
Florida's attorney general wasted no time. Because the DNA results failed to exonerate Duckett, the state moved swiftly to lift the stay and urged the Supreme Court to let the execution proceed on its original Tuesday schedule, Fox News reported.
The court said no. Six of seven justices voted to keep the stay in place. The ruling directed the lower court to continue reviewing successive claims connected to the DNA evidence. It also set a deadline: the state must provide status updates on outstanding issues by April 2.
The practical effect is that Duckett's execution date has passed without action, and no new date has been set. The case now returns to the lower court for further proceedings, proceedings whose scope and timeline remain unclear.
Duckett has maintained his innocence for decades. But the inconclusive DNA result did nothing to undermine the rest of the trial record. Teresa McAbee's fingerprints on his patrol car. The matching tire tracks at Knight Lake. The hour-plus gap in his radio logs the night she disappeared. His status as the last person seen with the child.
None of that evidence has been challenged by the new testing. It simply was not addressed by it.
The hair microscopy testimony is a different matter. Courts and forensic scientists have broadly acknowledged that microscopic hair comparison, as practiced in that era, was unreliable. Duckett's team has argued this weakens a key link in the prosecution's chain. Whether that argument, standing alone or combined with the inconclusive DNA results, is enough to warrant further relief is now the lower court's question to answer.
There is a reasonable case for caution when a man's life hangs on the outcome. No conservative who values ordered liberty and the rule of law should want the state to execute someone whose conviction rests on discredited forensic methods, if that were the whole picture.
But that is not the whole picture. The fingerprints, the tire tracks, the radio-log gap, the eyewitness account of Duckett placing Teresa in his car, none of it depends on hair microscopy. The DNA test Duckett himself requested did not produce the exoneration he sought. It produced ambiguity. And ambiguity, in a case with this much corroborating evidence, is not the same as doubt.
Teresa McAbee was 11 years old. She walked to a convenience store one evening in May 1987 and never came home. Her body was found the next morning in a lake less than a mile away. The man convicted of her rape and murder has now outlived her by nearly four decades on death row.
The Florida Supreme Court's decision to keep the stay in place may reflect an abundance of legal caution. But for Teresa McAbee's family and for Floridians who believe justice delayed is justice denied, the wait continues, with no end date in sight.
The lower court now holds the next move. Whether it acts with urgency or allows this case to drift further into procedural limbo will say a great deal about whether Florida's justice system still serves the victims it was built to protect.
Inconclusive is not innocent. And nearly 40 years is a long time to wait for a verdict that already came in.
