According to the Orlando Sentinel: On Thursday, the Florida supreme court denied the appeal of Mascotte child rapist and murderer James Duckett. Duckett was a former Mascotte police officer and has been on death row for the 1987 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl named Teresa McAbee. On the night of May 11, 1987, Teresa convinced her mother to let her walk the roughly 400 feet to the Circle K gas station near their home. The girl was found the next morning, floating in the nearby Knight Lake. Testimony, a single pubic hair, and fingerprints put the young girl in the patrol car of the officer, but because of, as Duckett’s side says, less-than-adequate examination of said hair, Duckett has applied for appeal four times since 1990. According to the supreme court: “Given this context, we conclude that the newly discovered evidence does not give rise to a reasonable doubt as to Duckett’s culpability.”
