Florida’s Oldest Inmate About to Be Executed on an Illegal Death Sentence

Since 1986, Dominic Okachoni has been waiting to be executed for killing Raymond and Martha Artsner, the parents of his ex-girlfriend. >> A phone line goes dead in the middle of the night. A woman runs barefoot across a dark yard, her daughter pulled tight against her chest. Behind her, a house in Pasco County, Florida, falls silent in the worst possible way.

 By sunrise, two people are gone. Raymond Artsner and his wife Martha Artsner will never wake up again. For nearly 40 years, the man responsible has been sitting on death row waiting. Now the waiting is almost over. He is 80 years old. Tomorrow, the state of Florida plans to strap him to a gurnie and end his life by lethal injection, making him, if it happens, the oldest man ever executed in the state’s history.

 But here’s the question almost nobody’s talking about. The jury that sent him to death row wasn’t even unanimous. Five jurors voted to let him live. Under today’s law, that split wouldn’t be enough to sentence anyone to death. So why is this execution still moving forward? This is the story of a double murder that unfolded over a single night in 1986.

 A night that started with a knock on a bedroom door and ended with two people dead and a mother running for her life. It’s a story about obsession, about a family that tried to protect their daughter, and about a legal system that has spent four decades deciding whether one man deserves to die for what he did. We’re going to walk through exactly what happened that night, how investigators tracked him down, what came out at trial, and why this case is making headlines again this week.

 Stay until the end because the outcome of this execution is still not guaranteed, and we’ll be covering exactly what happens. This is a true crime death row case that has waited decades for its ending. Here’s how it started. The man behind this case has a name. Dominic Anthony Aakon Jr. by the mid 1980s. Aone was living in Pasco County, Florida, and he was engaged to be married.

 Her name was Anita Jared. On paper, it looked like any other relationship heading toward a wedding. But underneath, there were problems that had been building for a long time. Anita’s parents, Raymond and Martha Artsner, never approved of Vakone. Not after the engagement. Not before it either. Court records and contemporary news accounts show their disapproval predated the breakup entirely.

 They had concerns about him long before things fell apart, and those concerns would later prove to be wellfounded. One of the central points of conflict in the relationship was a private decision Anita made regarding her own pregnancy. Akon did not take that decision well. Investigators later pointed to this as one of the key sources of the resentment that had been building inside him.

 Resentment that he directed not just at Anita, but eventually at the family standing behind her. And this wasn’t a man with a clean record before any of this happened. Back in 1980, 6 years before the case that would define his life, Aikon was arrested in Pasco County after a confrontation with law enforcement. It’s a documented incident on the books years before anyone had heard the name Oicon connected to what would become a defining case in Florida’s death row history.

 It shows a pattern, a willingness to escalate, a history of conflict with authority that predates everything that’s about to happen in this story. So by the time the engagement started falling apart, you have a man who already had a record of escalating confrontations, unresolved resentment tied to a personal loss, and a set of future in-laws who wanted nothing to do with him.

 Three separate pressure points, all converging on the same relationship at the same time. Anita ended things. And when she did, she didn’t just walk away from Oicon. She moved back in with her parents, back into the Artsner household, back under the protection of the two people who had never trusted him in the first place.

 To Aikon, that wasn’t just a breakup. That was Anita choosing her family over him. And in his mind, the Arts weren’t just her parents anymore. They were the obstacle standing between him and the woman he refused to let go of. That resentment did not stay quiet for long. Before we get into what happened next, if this case has your attention, subscribe now and tell us where you’re watching from. We like to know.

 We’re going deep into the investigation, the trial, and the legal fight still playing out this week, decades after this case began. You won’t want to miss how this one ends. By June of 1986, Anita Jared was living with her parents, Raymond and Martha Artsner, in a home in Holiday, Florida, a small community in Pasco County. She had her daughter with her.

The house was quiet that night, the way most homes are in the early hours of the morning. Then, sometime after midnight on the morning of June 10th, someone knocked on the sliding glass door leading into Anita’s bedroom. It was Aiconee. Anita woke up to the sound. She got up and she saw him standing outside at the door. He wanted to talk.

 She refused. She told him to leave. And when he didn’t move, she made it clear what would happen next. She told him she would call the police if he didn’t go. That threat mattered. It meant Anita saw enough of a risk in that moment to consider bringing in law enforcement. It also meant Aikon now knew exactly where things stood. The engagement was over.

The door was staying locked and the woman on the other side of that glass was prepared to involve the authorities to keep him out. For a moment, it looked like the confrontation was finished. Aikon left. He walked away from the house out of sight and the Artsner home went quiet again. No one inside knew what he was about to do next.

 As far as Anita and her parents understood it, the night was over. He had come, he had been refused, and he was gone. That assumption would not hold for long. What happened in the hour that followed would turn a late night confrontation at a bedroom door into one of the most talked about death row cases in Florida.

 And it starts with what Aikon did the moment he was out of view of that house. He didn’t go far. In the days before that night, people who knew Aikon from the local bars he frequented had already noticed a change in him. According to testimony given later at trial, bar employees said Aikon had been drinking heavily in the leadup to June 10th and that his comments about Anita and her family had grown increasingly hostile.

 He blamed the arts nurse for the end of the engagement. He talked about them the way someone talks about an obstacle, not a family. That anger didn’t stay in the bars. It followed him home that night. After leaving the Artsner property following Anita’s refusal to speak with him, Aikon didn’t go back to wherever he’d been staying to sleep it off.

 He went to get a handgun. Investigators later determined that within roughly an hour of being turned away at the door, Aakon returned to the same house in Holiday, Florida. This time he wasn’t there to talk. He was armed. Before he approached the house itself, Aikon cut the telephone lines running into the home.

 It was a deliberate move, one that would later stand out to investigators as clear evidence of planning. A person acting on impulse doesn’t stop to disable a family’s ability to call for help. This was a decision made with a specific outcome in mind. Cutting off any chance the Artsers had of reaching the outside world before he made his next move.

 With the lines cut and the house isolated, Aakon approached on foot, gun in hand. Inside, the Artsner family had no idea the confrontation from earlier that night wasn’t over. As far as they knew, Aikon was gone for good. He wasn’t. What happened next in the minutes that followed would end two lives and change the course of a family forever.

 And it started the moment Aikon stepped back onto that property. Aone was back on the property and this time someone inside the house heard him. Raymond Artsner stepped outside to check on the noise. What happened next took only seconds. Aone opened fire and Raymon was struck. Raymon did not die on the spot. He was taken to the hospital and before he passed away from his injuries, he was able to identify the man responsible.

 He told those around him it was Aakone. That identification would become one of the most important pieces of evidence in the entire case. A dying man naming the person who had just attacked him before the sun even came up. While Raymond was being rushed for help, Aikon forced his way into the house. Inside, Martha Artsner was there.

So was Anita and her daughter. Aone moved through the home and Martha was struck as well. She did not survive. In the chaos of those few minutes, Anita made a decision that would save her life and her daughter’s life. She got out. She got her daughter out with her and she ran, leaving the house behind, putting distance between them and the man still inside.

 Two people lost their lives in the span of one night. A man who had been engaged to marry into this family had just taken the lives of the two people who raised the woman he refused to let go of. Investigators would later piece together exactly how fast this all happened. How little time passed between Achon stepping back onto that property and the moment both Raymond and Martha were struck.

 It was not a long drawn out event. It was minutes, maybe less, and it changed everything for everyone connected to this family for the rest of their lives. This is the moment the case stopped being about a broken engagement and started being about two homicide charges, a manhunt, and eventually a death sentence that is still being carried out decades later this week.

 If you’re finding this case as gripping as we did putting it together, this is exactly the kind of story we cover. Real cases, real consequences, and the legal battles that follow them for decades. Subscribe now so you don’t miss what happens when Florida tries to close this case for good tomorrow.

 What came next was fast. Word spread. Law enforcement responded and within a short window, the search for Aicon was already underway. Anita didn’t stop running until she reached a neighbor’s house. Once there, safe with her daughter beside her. She called for help. The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office took her call within minutes of the attack.

 She gave them what they needed most, a name. Because Anita had known Aakon personally, she was able to give investigators a full description immediately, his name, his appearance, the vehicle he drove. That single piece of information changed everything about how fast this case moved. Deputies arrived at the Artsner property and confirmed what Anita had told them.

 Two victims, a break-in, a suspect already identified before the sun was fully up. From there, the sheriff’s office issued a be on the lookout alert for Oicon, sending his description out to every patrol unit in the area. An arrest warrant followed almost immediately, covering two counts of first-degree murder. The search didn’t take long.

 AON hadn’t gone far from the scene. He was found and taken into custody a short distance from the Artsner home without further incident. No standoff, no chase across county lines, just a quick coordinated response that ended with him in handcuffs before the day was over. When deputies searched the area around him, they recovered the handgun used in the shootings.

 That weapon would go on to become one of the central pieces of physical evidence prosecutors used to tie a directly to both deaths. In the span of a single night, Aakone had gone from a man knocking on a bedroom door to a suspect in a double homicide to a man in police custody. All before most of Pasco County had woken up for the day.

 The investigation was only getting started. What came next would take this case from a local tragedy into a courtroom and eventually onto death row. The case moved to trial in September of 1987, a little over a year after the murders. By the time Aiconee sat in a Pasco County courtroom, prosecutors had a strong foundation to work with.

 They had Anita’s identification. They had Raymond’s dying statement naming Aakone as the man who shot him. They had the recovered handgun. And they had the cut phone lines, which prosecutors pointed to as proof this wasn’t a moment of blind rage, but something planned in advance. Aone’s defense didn’t try to argue he wasn’t there.

 Instead, his attorneys built their case around his state of mind that night. The defense brought in psychiatric experts who testified that Aicone had a documented history of heavy alcohol use and that in the hours before the murders, he’d been drinking for an extended stretch of time. Their argument was that this level of intoxication, combined with the emotional collapse of his engagement, left him unable to form the kind of clear, deliberate intent the law requires for a first-degree murder conviction. In other words, the defense

wasn’t arguing innocence. They were arguing that what happened wasn’t premeditated. That Aakon was too impaired, too emotionally unraveled to have planned any of it. The state didn’t let that argument go unanswered. Prosecutors called their own psychiatric expert who reached a very different conclusion.

 This witness testified that regardless of how much Aikon had been drinking, his actions that night showed clear signs of planning. returning to retrieve a weapon, choosing to cut the telephone lines before approaching the house, waiting for a specific moment to act. To the state’s expert, none of that looked like impaired, impulsive behavior.

 It looked like someone making decisions one after another with a clear goal in mind. So, the jury was left with two competing psychiatric opinions, and it was up to them to decide which one to believe. They didn’t side with the defense. The jury found Aikome guilty on both counts of first-degree murder. The alcohol impairment argument, the claim that he was too intoxicated to premeditate was rejected.

 Then came the sentencing phase where the jury had to decide whether AON should receive the death penalty. This is where the case takes on the complexity that’s still relevant today. The jury’s vote on the death penalty wasn’t unanimous. It came back 7 to 5 in favor of death. Five jurors out of 12 believed Aikon’s life should be spared.

 At the time, Florida law didn’t require a unanimous jury recommendation to impose a death sentence. The final decision rested with the judge, who could weigh the jury’s recommendation, but wasn’t bound to follow it exactly the way the jury framed it. And that’s exactly what happened. The judge handed down two separate sentences, one for each victim.

For the murder of Raymond Artsner, Aikon received a sentence of life in prison. For the murder of Martha Artsner, the judge accepted the jury’s 7 to5 recommendation and sentenced Aikon to death. Two people, two separate outcomes from the same night, the same weapon, the same man. One sentence meant Aikon would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

 The other meant eventually an execution date. At the time in 1987, this kind of split verdict and a non-unanimous death recommendation was fully within the bounds of Florida law. Nobody in that courtroom could have known that this exact detail, a 7 to5 vote, would become the center of a legal fight still playing out nearly 40 years later.

 For now, though, the case was closed. Aikon had been convicted, sentenced, and sent to death row. What came next wasn’t quick. It would take decades. A death sentence is never the final word. It’s the beginning of a legal process that can take decades, and Aikon’s case would prove exactly that. His first stop was direct appeal, the standard review every death sentence in Florida automatically goes through.

 In 1991, the Florida Supreme Court reviewed the conviction and the sentence and affirmed both. In plain terms, the state’s highest court looked at the trial, looked at the evidence, looked at the sentencing, and found no legal error significant enough to overturn any of it. That made the conviction and the death sentence final, at least for the moment.

 But a final ruling from the state supreme court doesn’t end a death penalty case. It just moves it into the next phase. The following year in 1992, Aicon’s legal team filed a petition for a rid of habius corpus challenging specific jury instructions used during his original trial. The argument was technical, focused on the exact wording judges used to instruct jurors on certain aggravating factors in death penalty cases.

 The court took months to consider it, and in 1993, the petition was denied. That denial didn’t stop the appeals. It simply shifted them into a new stage of litigation, the postconviction process, where a defendant can raise claims that go beyond what was argued at trial, including questions about the effectiveness of his original defense attorneys.

 By 1997, this next round of proceedings had reached the point of an evidentiary hearing where witnesses were brought in and testimony was taken on the claims AON’s attorneys were raising. Hearings like this can take years to schedule and resolve, and this one was no exception. It took until 2000 for the Florida Supreme Court to rule on Oicon’s initial postconviction motion.

 Once again, the court reviewed the claims and once again, it upheld the original conviction and sentence. From there, the case moved into federal court. Oicone’s attorneys pursued a federal habius petition arguing constitutional violations that go beyond what state courts are required to address. That process worked its way through the federal system for years until finally in 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued its ruling.

 Like every court before it, the 11th Circuit affirmed the denial of relief. By this point, nearly 20 years had passed since the murders, and Aicon had exhausted round after round of state and federal review, all without success. Then years later, a major shift in death penalty law gave his case one more angle to pursue.

 In a case known as Hurst, the US Supreme Court ruled that juries, not judges, must make the specific factual findings required to impose a death sentence, and that those findings generally need to be unanimous. For a lot of older death row cases in Florida, cases sentenced under the old system. This ruling opened the door to new appeals. Aakone tried to use it.

 His attorneys argued that his non-unanimous 7 to5 jury recommendation should now be considered unconstitutional under this new standard. The courts disagreed because Aiconee sentence had already become final years before this new ruling took effect. The courts determined that the Hurst decision simply didn’t apply retroactively to his case.

 The 7-5 vote that sentenced him to death in 1987 would stand. Even though that same vote would not be enough to sentence anyone to death under Florida law today. Decade after decade, appeal after appeal, the outcome kept repeating. Every court that reviewed this case reached the same conclusion. But time was still moving. Aon was growing older on death row.

 And soon a new chapter in this case would begin. One that had nothing to do with legal arguments about jury instructions and everything to do with a warrant, a date, and a countdown that’s still running as you watch this. This year alone, Governor Ron Dantis has now signed 12 death warrants in Florida. AON is the 12th.

 On June 26th, Dantis signed the order setting Aikon’s execution date. According to that warrant, Aikon is scheduled to be put to death at Florida State Prison near Stark at 6:00 p.m. on July 28th. As of the moment you’re watching this, that date is just days away. To understand why this particular execution has drawn so much attention, you have to look at what’s been happening in Florida over the past several weeks.

 Just before Aikon’s warrant was signed, the state carried out the execution of Dusty Ray Spencer, age 74, who at the time became the oldest person put to death in Florida since the state resumed executions in the 1970s. That record didn’t last long. Shortly after, Dennis Soccer, also 74, was executed, surpassing Spencer’s age by just a matter of days.

 Now, Aakon is next in that same sequence. At 80 years old, if his execution goes forward as scheduled, he will become the oldest person ever executed in the state of Florida, older than both Spencer and soccer by several years. That number 80 has become the center of his final legal fight.

 AON’s attorneys went back to the Florida Supreme Court one more time, raising a set of arguments aimed at stopping or at least delaying the execution. They pointed to his advanced age. They raised documented health conditions, including kidney problems and heart issues. They argued that the pace of executions happening across Florida this year has placed enormous strain on prison staff who carry out these procedures.

 They also raised concerns about a reported shortage of one of the drugs used in the state’s execution protocol. The Florida Supreme Court rejected every one of those arguments. The court ruled that age and illness alone do not make an execution unconstitutional, that concerns about staff and drug supply didn’t meet the legal standard required to halt the process, and that Aicon’s execution should proceed as scheduled.

 But the Supreme Court wasn’t the only voice pushing back this week. Fidians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an advocacy group that has followed this case closely, filed its own request for a stay of execution. Their argument goes back to that jury vote from 1987, the 7 to5 recommendation for death.

 The group pointed out that five separate jurors out of 12 looked at all the same evidence and concluded that Aicon’s life should be spared. Under the standard used in Florida today, a death sentence requires at least eight jurors in agreement. Aon’s case fell short of that number decades before that number became the law.

 Their request for a stay was denied as well. As it stands right now, every legal avenue available to Aikon has been tried, and every single one has failed. There’s one more detail that’s made this week especially notable in Florida’s legal history. Aone isn’t the only person scheduled to die on July 28th.

 Earlier that same day at noon, a separate inmate, James Duckett, is also scheduled for execution, an unrelated case. That makes July 28th the first day in more than 60 years that Florida has scheduled two executions within the same 24 hours. So where does that leave Aikon? 3 days from now at 6:00 p.m. in a prison near Stark, Florida.

 Barring some lastminute intervention from a federal court or the US Supreme Court itself, this case is on track to end exactly where it’s been heading for the past four decades. a jury that couldn’t fully agree, a sentence built on a vote that wouldn’t hold up today, and a state that has made clear it intends to carry that sentence out anyway.

 Whether that’s justice finally being served or a legal standard being ignored because it’s inconvenient this late in the process is a question this case forces you to sit with. And tomorrow, we’ll know how it ends. Every case like this one comes down to a single question, not whether a crime happened because that was never in dispute here.

 The question is whether the punishment still fits decades later under rules that have since changed. In 1987, seven jurors were enough to send a man to death row. Today, that same vote would fall short. Florida law now asks for at least eight. Oicone’s sentence exists in that gap between the old standard and the new one.

 A gap the courts have decided doesn’t matter anymore, no matter how many times it’s been raised. Tomorrow, that gap either closes with an execution or something changes at the last possible moment. Either way, this case will have an ending, and it’s coming faster than most people realize. If you want to know exactly how it plays out, subscribe now.

We’ll be following this one all the way to its conclusion, whatever that conclusion turns out to be. This is a case that’s waited 40 years for its final chapter. We’re about to find out what that chapter says.