Overview
- Florida declared Dennis Sochor dead at 6:16 p.m. local time after a three-drug lethal injection, finishing a case that began with the 1982 killing of 18-year-old Patricia Gifford.
- Sochor, who was arrested in 1986, confessed and was sentenced to death in 1987 and apologized in brief final remarks while thanking family for support.
- Patricia Gifford’s body has never been found and her sister Marilyn said Sochor had decades to disclose the remains but did not, leaving the family without closure.
- The execution comes as Florida has increased the pace of carry-outs and about half of its 242 death-row inmates have exhausted appeals, allowing more death dates to be set.
- Advocates and critics point to the aging of the U.S. death-row population and the rising number of elderly executions as a test of whether capital punishment should apply to inmates decades removed from their crimes.