When Florida executes James “Ernie” Hitchcock on Thursday evening, the state will be ending the life of a prisoner who has been condemned to die longer than almost anyone else.

The state will also, some believe, be taking the life of an innocent man.

Hitchcock, who was sentenced to death for the murder of his 13-year-old stepniece nearly half a century ago, has long maintained that it was his brother who killed the girl.

Those claims never landed him a new trial; his murder conviction is still anchored to what a jury in 1977 decided.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant last month, part of an unprecedented string of executions the governor has ordered. Since last year, DeSantis has authorized 24 executions.

Last week, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously turned down a request from Hitchcock’s lawyers for a last-minute stay of execution.

Melanie Verdecia, an attorney and publisher of the Substack blog Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, expressed concern that Florida, which leads the nation in executions, also leads in the number of men exonerated from death row. Since 1973, the state has seen 30 condemned men exonerated, more than any other state.

“It is deeply concerning that the courts have summarily denied (Hitchcock’s) innocence claims based on procedural technicalities,” Verdecia said. “Certainly, our constitution protects innocent persons from being executed — the ultimate punishment that can’t be undone.”

As of Wednesday, Hitchcock’s only hope for a reprieve rested with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The murder conviction and claims of innocence

Court records describe Hitchcock in 1976 as unemployed and living with his brother, Richard, and his family in Orlando. Late the night of July 30 that year, Hitchcock left their house and spent several hours drinking and smoking marijuana with friends.

Hitchcock later told police he returned about 2:30 a.m. and entered the home through a dining room window. He said he went upstairs to a bedroom, where 13-year-old Cynthia Driggers slept.

He told police he “had sex” with the girl and that afterward she threatened to tell her mother, according to court records. When he stopped her from leaving the bedroom, she began to yell.

He grabbed her by the neck, he told police, and carried her outside. He began to choke and hit the girl, he said.

“She was still hollerin,’ so I choked her,” he said. “And I just kept chokin’ and chokin’. I don’t know what happened. I just choked her and choked.”

The girl went quiet. Hitchcock said he pushed her body into some bushes, then went back inside, showered and went to bed.

His confession led to a murder charge. But in his trial the following year, Hitchcock’s story changed.

Taking the witness stand in his defense, he told a jury Cynthia had let him into the house. His brother caught them together in her bedroom after they’d had sex, he said. Enraged, his brother dragged the girl outside and began to choke her. Hitchcock tried to stop him, he said, but the girl was dead by the time he got her away.

He said Richard Hitchcockclaimed he didn’t mean to kill her. James Hitchcock told his brother to go inside and said he would cover for him. He opened a window, he said, to make it look like an intruder had entered the house. He confessed to the murder, he said, because he was trying to protect his brother.

A jury didn’t buy it. Hitchcock was convicted of first-degree murder. A majority of the jury recommended the death penalty.

A long slog through court

The longevity of Hitchcock’s case is partly explained by his death sentence having been overturned several times due to various legal errors. Each time, new juries again recommended the death penalty.

In 1988, their vote was 7-5 for death. In 1993, it was 12-0. In 1996, it was 10-2.

At his 1988 resentencing, eight of his fellow death row prisoners were hauled to an Orange County courtroom to testify as character witnesses.

Among them was Amos Robinson, who is serving a life sentence for his role in a 1983 Pinellas County murder. Robinson is also awaiting trial for two Tampa slayings, one of which resulted in a man’s wrongful conviction.

“I didn’t have any tennis shoes to go out and play basketball, and Ernie bought me some,” Robinson testified, as quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

Hitchcock was called a “peacemaker.” One man said he’d helped him learn to read.

And hemaintained his innocence.

In 2001, he sought DNA testing of various pieces of forensic evidence, including hair found at the crime scene. A judge denied his request, saying that he’d failed to demonstrate how such testing would exonerate him.

In the early 2000s, his lawyers presented testimony from family members who spoke of his brother’s violent tendencies in a bid to secure a new trial.

Richard Hitchcock, who has since died, was described in court records as “sexually possessive” of the women in his family.

One younger sister testified in a hearing that Richard would sexually assault her and choke her when she resisted. She recalled atime when Richard had almost choked her to death. He became violent, she said, when she wanted to date boys her own age.

One of Richard Hitchcock’s other stepdaughters recalled similar volatility, testifying in 2003 that he’d raped her and her sisters and choked them.

“He wanted to control everybody,” she testified.

The family’s word wasn’t enough to secure Hitchcock a new trial.

Other relatives have through the years voiced certainty that James Hitchcock is guilty and should be executed.

“I wake up screaming at night because he’s still there,” Chip Stevens, Driggers’ cousin, told lawmakers in 1999.

A witness to death penalty history

Hitchcock was 20 when he was accused of murder. He is 69 now.

He has survived through the terms of 10 governors and eight presidents. Only three men have lived on Florida’s death row longer than he has.

Hitchcock was there when Florida executed John Spenkelink in 1979, the state’s first execution in the modern era of capital punishment. And he has been there for the 129 other executions since.

Barring a last-minute stay, Hitchcock on Thursday night will become No.131.

For a few years in the early 2000s, Hitchcock was among several death row prisoners who managed to acquire online blogs where they wrote with the help of outside pen pals.

He published under the moniker “Average Joe,” musing about the tedium of prison life and lamenting the years he’d lost.

In 2006, Hitchcock wrote about the legal wrangling in his own case, mentioned people who have been exonerated through DNA and mused about whether an extended stay on death row might be considered cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

“And whether an innocent man is executed or just lost 10-20-30 years of his life. It’s the same to me,” he wrote. “You can’t give a 50 year old man back 25-30 years of their life. And how much has a person lost in that many years: a chance at a career, a family, travel, just living those lost years would and could of been. I mean isn’t that bad enough?”