Florida executes James Ernest Hitchcock in 1976 child killing case

Florida put James Ernest Hitchcock to death at Florida State Prison near Starke, closing a case that began with the July 1976 killing of Cynthia Driggers, his brother Richard Hitchcock’s 13-year-old stepdaughter. Hitchcock, 70, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. on April 30 after a lethal injection, with the curtain to the death chamber opening promptly at the scheduled 6 p.m. time.

The execution arrived nearly half a century after the crime, a timeline that laid bare how capital punishment can stretch far beyond the original verdict. Hitchcock was convicted of first-degree murder at a January 1977 trial, and the jury recommended death. Over the years, that sentence was overturned and reinstated more than once as his case moved through appeals and collateral review, turning one killing into decades of litigation and repeated court fights over the scope of mitigation evidence.

The Florida Supreme Court rejected Hitchcock’s final postconviction appeal on April 23 and denied a stay of execution. In its opinion, the court said Gov. Ron DeSantis had signed the warrant setting the execution for April 30 and repeated the underlying facts of the case. Court records say Hitchcock had moved into Richard Hitchcock’s home only two to three weeks before the killing. The opinion also said Hitchcock told police he returned home around 2:30 a.m., had sex with the victim, then choked and beat her after she threatened to tell her mother.

Florida’s execution of Hitchcock was its sixth of 2026, placing the state at the top of the national list this year. The Death Penalty Information Center said 10 prisoners had been executed in the United States by April 30, and listed Florida’s protocol as a three-drug lethal injection beginning with etomidate. Florida carried out 19 executions in 2025, a state record and the most since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, surpassing the previous mark of eight set in 2014 and matched in 1984. Florida’s death row was reported at about 250 inmates in early March.

For Driggers’ family, the execution brought the end of a long wait that began when she was killed as a child. Afterward, her younger sister, Lynn Cobb, said the family could now close that chapter of its life. Tanya Clement, Driggers’ niece, was photographed holding pictures of her aunt outside the prison. Hitchcock’s final words were brief and cryptic: “Just to say goodbye to Joshua my friend. Thanks for all you've done,” he said, without elaboration.

The case left Florida with a stark question about modern capital punishment: whether justice served after 49 years still feels like justice, or whether the passage of time changes its meaning entirely.