Bio

James Ernest Hitchcock was born on April 5, 1956, in Manila, Arkansas, where he grew up in poverty alongside six siblings; his family lived in a shack, and his parents worked picking cotton. His father died of skin cancer when Hitchcock was six years old. As an adult, Hitchcock had a prior burglary conviction and was on parole for that offense in 1976. Two to three weeks before the murder, Hitchcock — then unemployed — moved to the Orlando, Florida area to stay with his brother, Richard Hitchcock, and Richard's family, which included Richard's 13-year-old stepdaughter, Cynthia "Cindy" Driggers.

Murder Story

On the evening of July 30, 1976, Hitchcock watched television with his brother's family until around 11 p.m., then went out drinking beer and smoking marijuana with friends in Winter Garden, Florida. He returned home at approximately 2:30 a.m. on July 31, entering through a dining room window before going to his own bedroom. He then went into Cynthia Driggers's room and sexually assaulted her. Afterward, Driggers said she was hurt and told Hitchcock she intended to tell her mother what had happened.

Hitchcock grabbed Driggers by the neck and took her outside the house, attempting to persuade her not to tell anyone. When she resisted and yelled, Hitchcock choked and struck her before strangling her to death. He left her body in nearby bushes, then returned inside, showered, and went to bed. Her body was discovered afterward, and Hitchcock was arrested as a suspect on August 5, 1976, five days after the killing.

Hitchcock initially confessed to killing Driggers, telling police he had done so after she threatened to tell her parents that the two of them had engaged in consensual sexual intercourse. At his 1977 trial, however, Hitchcock recanted this account. He testified instead that his brother Richard had walked in on him and Driggers shortly after they had consensual sex, and that Richard — enraged by the discovery — was the one who took Driggers outside and killed her. Hitchcock claimed he had only confessed originally to protect his brother. The jury did not accept this account and convicted him of first-degree murder; a majority of the jury recommended a death sentence, and he was formally sentenced to death on February 11, 1977.

Hitchcock's case went through an unusually long series of appeals and resentencings over the following two decades. In 1987, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hitchcock v. Dugger that the judge and jury at his original sentencing had been unconstitutionally prevented from considering certain mitigating evidence about his background that was not specifically listed in Florida's sentencing statute. This ruling required a new sentencing hearing. At that February 1988 resentencing hearing, the defense called eight fellow death row inmates who testified that Hitchcock had been a positive, calming presence during his time in custody; Hitchcock again testified that his brother was the actual killer. On February 20, 1988, following a three-day hearing, the jury recommended a death sentence by a 7–5 vote, and Hitchcock was resentenced to death on February 24, 1988. Subsequent legal proceedings led to two further resentencing hearings, resulting in death sentences being reimposed on August 30, 1993, and again, in what proved to be his final sentence, on October 10, 1996.

Hitchcock's case remained in the state and federal appellate courts for another three decades. On March 31, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant setting his execution for April 30, 2026. In the days before the execution, Hitchcock's attorneys argued that he was innocent and that the state had improperly withheld public records related to his case; the Florida Supreme Court denied this appeal, and a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied on the morning of the scheduled execution.

James Ernest Hitchcock was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, Florida, on April 30, 2026. He was 70 years old. In his final statement, he said goodbye to a friend named Joshua and thanked him for his support. He was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m., roughly eleven minutes after the execution began, becoming the sixth person executed in Florida that year. Members of Cynthia Driggers's family — including her sister, Lynn Cobb, and cousins Chip and Ginie Meadows — attended the execution and spoke afterward about the fifty-year process that preceded it.