The last inmate on Florida’s death row was 74 years old — the state’s oldest executioner in modern times. The next two sets will die in adulthood.
The series of executions, due to be carried out by the end of this month, highlights the aging population on death row. One of the Florida inmates scheduled to die in July, a man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986, is 80 years old and will be the second known execution in the US.
For others, it raises questions about the humanity of imposing the death penalty on prisoners who may die prematurely of natural causes. For others, it shows how lengthy appeals designed to ensure constitutional protections and prevent innocent people from being executed can delay justice.
“Is this the intention, as if to say, we will not allow natural death to help you escape execution?” asked Reverend Dustin Feddon, a Catholic priest who has ministered to death row inmates in Florida since 2013. Noting the church’s opposition to the death penalty, he added: “Killing the very weak and elderly is cruel and even more unusual.”
Marilyn Gifford, her sister’s killer expected to die on Tuesday, doesn’t see it that way.
“I’m just happy that it happened in our life,” he said. “As if my mother is alive, I will see.”
Decades on death row
On June 25, Dusty Ray Spencer, who was convicted of stabbing his wife to death in 1992, became the oldest person to be executed in Florida in modern history. The US Supreme Court rejected the 74-year-old’s claim that his liver disease made him vulnerable to excruciating pain from the lethal injection.
Dennis Sochor, who was convicted of murdering 18-year-old Patricia Gifford hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party in 1982, will be just a week older when he is executed on Tuesday. Marilyn Gifford said she and her family plan to be there.
Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, has spent nearly four decades on death row after being convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents. He is scheduled to die on July 28 and will become the second oldest known US inmate to be executed, after Walter Moody Jr. Moody, who was 83 years old, was executed in Alabama in 2018 for killing a federal judge and a black civil rights lawyer.
There are three inmates older than Occhicone on Florida’s death row.
It remains unclear why Florida decided to execute three inmates in a row. Maria DeLiberato, legal director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, noted that in Florida, the governor only has discretion when it comes to scheduling executions. In many other death penalty states, planning is in the courts.
About half of Florida’s 242 inmates on death row have completed their applications and could see their death warrants issued at any time. Michael Sheridan’s family spent a year calling and writing to Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, is asking her to sign the death warrant, before Sheridan’s killer is executed earlier this year.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment. He presided over a record 19 executions in 2025, more in one year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The state has executed nine prisoners so far this year.
DeSantis said last year that his goal is to bring justice to the families of the victims who have been waiting for decades.
“Some of these crimes were committed in the 80s,” said the governor last year. “Justice delayed denied.”
The death row is growing
The average age of inmates sentenced in the US has increased from the 30s to the 50s over the past century, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Although some inmates commit capital crimes later in life, lengthy appeals and mandatory reviews have resulted in many spending decades on death row, sometimes with medical conditions that may complicate suicide attempts.
Occhicone has a number of age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, according to his lawyers. He needs help getting in and out of the shower, they noted.
Under Supreme Court precedent, those who were under 18 at the time of their crimes will not be executed. But age alone does not provide a legal basis for avoiding execution, said Gerod Hooper, an attorney with Florida’s Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, a state agency that provides legal representation after convictions.
“You have to say that it is unconstitutional to kill this 80-year-old man because he is mentally disturbed, he does not have the capacity to be killed,” said Hooper. “Or for some medical condition, the cocktail of drugs they inject can cause unnecessary pain and suffering.”
Death row inmates with dementia in Utah and Alabama avoided execution and later died of apparent natural causes. An Idaho inmate has received at least one reprieve because of cancer and other health problems, but federal officials continue to seek his death sentence.
At the time of Gifford’s disappearance, Sochor was free on probation for a 1980 rape conviction.
“I knew him when he was young, and he was a bully,” said Frank Frandel, who grew up as a family friend in Portland, Mich.
Frandel did not express sympathy for Sochor’s growth, pointing out that Sochor’s father will turn 99 this year.
“He can live another 20 years,” said Frandel. “Well, I don’t feel for him at that age.”
