Death Clock Starts Ticking For Broward Killer Dennis Sochor

Florida is now counting down toward another execution date, as Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a death warrant for Dennis Michael Sochor, the 74-year-old convicted in the decades-old Broward County killing of an 18-year-old woman. The warrant sets an execution date of July 14, 2026, at Florida State Prison in Starke, with a one-week window that runs from noon on July 14 through noon on July 21. The victim’s body was never found, and the case has been tangled in appeals for years.

According to News4JAX, DeSantis signed the warrant on June 10, specifying lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke as the method and location. News coverage of the case notes that Sochor was sentenced to death after a 1987 trial in which jurors heard three tape-recorded confessions. With this order in place, Florida now has two inmates currently scheduled for execution.

Case background

Court records and appellate rulings recount how Patricia ("Patty") Gifford went out to the Banana Boat bar for a New Year’s celebration in 1981 and later left with Sochor. Prosecutors say he choked her after she refused to have sex. A summary of the appeals record on Justia notes that three tape-recorded confessions were played for jurors, that Sochor was arrested in 1986 in DeKalb County, Georgia, and that he was sentenced to death on Nov. 2, 1987. The appeals docket has stretched on ever since, with post-conviction litigation running for decades.

Execution timing and statewide context

The warrant lands during an unusually intense period for capital punishment in Florida. The state has carried out eight executions so far this year and put to death a modern-era high of 19 people in 2025, according to national reporting. The AP reported the recent execution tally, and Amnesty International’s 2025 overview documents Florida’s outsized share of U.S. executions last year. Defense attorneys and advocates have sharply criticized the pace at which new warrants are being signed and carried out.

What happens next

Once a death warrant is signed, defense teams typically rush to file last-minute motions and seek stays, and Florida’s rules provide for an insanity-to-be-executed review before any execution can go forward. Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.811 and state statute 922.07 spell out how competency reviews and stays can trigger circuit-court proceedings and additional appeals. If courts decline to block the warrant and clemency is denied, the Department of Corrections is responsible for carrying out the sentence at the facility named in the warrant.

Sochor’s case now becomes part of a broader wave of long-running capital prosecutions returning to the spotlight as the state moves to carry out multiple death sentences. Legal teams for death-row prisoners and opponents of Florida’s accelerated schedule say more legal challenges are likely in the weeks ahead.