MIAMI — Florida was once more getting ready Tuesday to execute one in all its oldest demise row prisoners in historical past, a 74-year-old convicted assassin who is one in all three older inmates set to die within the span of a month within the nation’s busiest demise penalty state.
Dennis Sochor, who has been on demise row for the reason that Nineteen Eighties, would grow to be the oldest inmate Florida has executed in historical past — at the least for now.
Later this month, Florida can also be set to execute an 80-year-old prisoner who can be the state’s first octogenarian to obtain the demise penalty.
The executions spotlight the nation’s getting older demise row inhabitants and the busy demise row chamber in Florida, which has already carried out 9 executions this yr, greater than each different state mixed.
Sochor is scheduled to obtain a three-drug injection beginning at 6 p.m. at Florida State Jail close to Starke.
He was convicted of killing a lady on Jan. 1, 1982, simply hours after assembly her at a New Yr’s Eve get together.
Simply weeks earlier, Florida executed one other 74-year-old inmate, Dusty Ray Spencer, over the killing of his estranged spouse.
He’s presently the oldest inmate to ever die by deadly injection in Florida, and Sochor will probably be precisely one week older if Tuesday’s execution is carried out as scheduled.
It’s unclear why Florida set the executions for the three prisoners consecutively.
Maria DeLiberato, authorized director of Floridians for Options to the Dying Penalty, famous that in Florida, the governor has virtually sole discretion with regards to the scheduling of executions. In lots of different demise penalty states, the scheduling is as much as the courts.
The workplace of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, didn’t reply to an e mail searching for remark concerning the state’s current executions.
A New Yr’s Day killing
In line with courtroom data, 18-year-old Patricia Gifford was celebrating the upcoming New Yr with a buddy at a Fort Lauderdale space bar after they met Sochor and his brother.
The 4 spent a number of hours speaking, however after the buddy turned sick and went to sleep in her automotive, Gifford left with Sochor and his brother to get breakfast.
However as an alternative of going for meals, Sochor stopped his truck in a secluded space and attacked Gifford when she refused to have intercourse with him, based on investigators.
Sochor was later arrested in Georgia in 1986 on unrelated costs and extradited to Florida. Sochor’s brother advised police that Sochor was liable for Gifford’s disappearance, and Sochor himself confessed on tape to choking Gifford and disposing of her physique, which was by no means discovered.
A jury discovered him responsible of first-degree homicide and kidnapping in 1987, and he was sentenced to demise.
Final week, the state Supreme Court docket denied Sochor’s appeals. His attorneys had argued that the state violated his proper to a good trial by failing to reveal a 2022 letter despatched to Sochor’s brother from a South Florida detective asking for details about the situation of Gifford’s physique.
The attorneys additionally claimed that the execution medicine wouldn’t successfully maintain Sochor sedated.
A last enchantment was nonetheless pending earlier than the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
Oldest inmates executed in Florida
In line with Florida Division of Corrections data, the oldest inmates beforehand executed by the state have been each 72: Samuel Lee Smithers on Oct. 14, 2025, for the 1996 killings of two girls and R. Charlie Gifford on Feb. 21, 1951, for the 1950 taking pictures of a state consultant, Charles Schuh Jr.
Nationwide, the oldest U.S. inmate executed in fashionable occasions was Walter Leroy Moody Jr., 83.
He was put to demise in Alabama in 2018 for a wave of Southern mail bombs that killed a federal choose and a Black civil rights legal professional in 1989.
A complete of 16 executions have been carried out this yr within the U.S., with Florida, to date, finishing up greater than all different states mixed.
