Overview
- Florida put Dennis Sochor to death by a three-drug lethal injection on Tuesday after state and federal courts denied his last appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court refused a stay.
- Sochor was convicted in 1987 for the 1982 killing of 18-year-old Patricia Gifford and was pronounced dead at roughly 6:16 p.m., making him the oldest person executed in Florida’s modern era.
- The state has scheduled additional elderly executions this month, including an 80-year-old, with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office exercising near-sole authority over execution timing in Florida.
- Defense lawyers raised medical claims about lethal-drug effects such as pulmonary edema and argued frailty could cause unconstitutional pain while victims’ relatives said the executions bring long-sought closure.
- About half of Florida’s roughly 242 death-row inmates have exhausted appeals and could receive death warrants at any time, a backlog that helps explain why the executed population has grown older over decades.