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The Florida Supreme Court rejected on Wednesday the last appeal presented by the attorneys for Dennis Michael Sochor, 74, clearing the way for his execution next Tuesday, July 14, at the Florida State Prison in Starke, reported CBS Miami.
Sochor was sentenced to death for the murder of Patricia Gifford, an 18-year-old whom he strangled after meeting her during the New Year's Eve celebration of 1981 at the Banana Boat bar in Broward County. The sentence was imposed on November 2, 1987, and was upheld in 1993, which means the defendant has spent more than three decades on death row.
The execution order was signed by Governor Ron DeSantis on June 11. This is the eleventh order issued this year, and if carried out, the death of Sochor will become the tenth execution carried out in Florida in 2026, amid an intensified application of the death penalty driven by the Republican governor.
The state had already set a precedent in 2025 when it executed 19 inmates, the highest number recorded in Florida's modern era. This total accounted for nearly 40% of all executions carried out in the United States that year and far exceeded the previous state record of eight executions, reached in 2014.
The defense questioned the lethal injection
Sochor's defense argued that the lethal injection protocol used by Florida, based on a combination of three drugs, violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
The lawyers argued that the dose of etomidate, used as a sedative, does not ensure that the condemned remains unconscious during the execution and that, when combined with other medications, it can cause acute pulmonary edema, resulting in an intense feeling of suffocation.
As an alternative, they requested authorization for execution by firing squad, considering that this method would lead to loss of consciousness "within a time frame of three to five seconds."
However, the Supreme Court dismissed those arguments, pointing out that the autopsies cited by the defense, corresponding to executions carried out between 2017 and 2026, "have been available since the first one was conducted in 2017" and that the lethal injection protocol has not undergone substantial changes during that period.
The judges also dismissed the accusation that the Prosecutor's Office concealed a letter sent in 2022 by a detective from the Broward County Sheriff's Office to Sochor's brother, Gary.
According to the ruling, the letter only requested information that could lead to the recovery of Patricia Gifford's body, whose remains were never found.
The defense has argued for years that the conviction was largely based on the testimony of Gary Sochor, who allegedly received transactional immunity in exchange for testifying against his brother. In a motion filed in 2016, the convicted individual also claimed that the prosecution concealed information indicating that Gary had confessed to a friend that he too participated in the crime.
Another execution is once again underway
In a separate decision issued on the same Wednesday, the Supreme Court also lifted the suspension that had halted the execution of James Aren Duckett, a 68-year-old former police officer convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in 1987.
Duckett had obtained a temporary suspension in March to allow for new DNA tests. However, the Florida Attorney General concluded that those analyses did not provide evidence that could exonerate him.
Although Duckett's execution order has expired, a spokesperson for Governor DeSantis avoided confirming when a new one might be signed, simply responding, "Stay informed."
Currently, 246 people remain on death row in Florida, one of the states with the highest number of death penalty sentences in the United States.
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