MIAMI (AP) — The most recent inmate secured to a table in Florida’s execution chamber was 74, making him the oldest person put to death by the state in the modern era. The next two prisoners scheduled for execution are even older.
The executions, expected to take place before the end of the month, are drawing attention to the increasingly elderly population on death row nationwide. One Florida inmate slated to die in July — an 80-year-old man convicted of murdering his former girlfriend’s parents in 1986 — would become only the second known person in his 80s to be executed in the United States.
For opponents, the cases revive concerns about the morality of executing prisoners who may be nearing death from natural causes. Supporters, however, point to the long appeals process — intended to safeguard constitutional rights and prevent wrongful executions — as a system that can also leave victims’ families waiting decades for punishment to be carried out.
“Is this intentional, as though to say, we’re not going to let a natural death help you escape executions?” asked the Rev. Dustin Feddon, a Catholic priest who has ministered to people on Florida’s death row since 2013. Citing the Catholic Church’s opposition to capital punishment, he added: “To execute those that are the most frail and elderly is even more cruel and unusual.”
Marilyn Gifford, whose sister’s killer is scheduled to be executed Tuesday, views the matter differently.
“I’m just happy it’s ever happening in our lifetime,” she said. “I wish my mother was alive to see it.”
Death warrants follow decades on death row
On June 25, Dusty Ray Spencer, convicted of stabbing his wife to death in 1992, became the oldest person executed in Florida’s modern history. The U.S. Supreme Court denied the 74-year-old’s claim that his liver disease could make lethal injection cause him extreme pain.
Dennis Sochor, who was convicted of killing 18-year-old Patricia Gifford shortly after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party as 1982 began, would be one week older than Spencer if his execution proceeds Tuesday. Marilyn Gifford said she and her family intend to attend.
Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, has spent nearly four decades on death row after being sentenced in the murders of his ex-girlfriend’s parents. He is scheduled to die July 28 and would become the second oldest prisoner known to be put to death in the U.S., after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr. Moody was executed in Alabama in 2018 for killing a federal judge and a Black civil rights attorney.
There are three inmates older than Occhicone on Florida’s death row.
The scheduling of executions is up to the governor
It’s unclear why Florida set the executions for the three prisoners consecutively. Maria DeLiberato, legal director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, noted that in Florida, the governor has practically sole discretion when it comes to the scheduling of executions. In many other death penalty states, the scheduling is up to the courts.
About half of Florida’s 242 death row inmates have exhausted their appeals and could see their death warrant issued at any time. The family of Michael Sheridan spent a year calling and writing to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, requesting he sign a death warrant, before Sheridan’s killer was executed earlier this year.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment. He oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The state has executed nine inmates so far this year.
DeSantis said last year his goal is to bring justice to victims’ families who have waited for decades.
“Some of these crimes were committed in the ’80s,” the governor said last year. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Death row gets older
The average age of inmates executed in the U.S. has crept up from the 30s to the 50s over the past half-century, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. While some inmates committed capital offenses later in life, lengthy appeals and mandatory reviews have resulted in many spending decades on death row, sometimes developing medical conditions that can complicate efforts to execute them.
Occhicone has several age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, according to his attorneys. He needs help getting in and out of the shower, they noted.
Under Supreme Court precedent, those who were under 18 when they committed their crimes cannot be put to death. But advanced age alone doesn’t provide a legal case for avoiding execution, said Gerod Hooper, an attorney with Florida’s Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, a state agency that provides post-conviction legal representation.
“You’d have to say it’s unconstitutional to execute this 80-year-old because he’s mentally deficient, he doesn’t have capacity to be executed,” Hooper said. “Or because of some underlying medical condition, the drug cocktail they inject would cause undue pain and suffering.”
Death row inmates with dementia in Utah and Alabama have avoided execution and later died of apparent natural causes. An inmate in Idaho received at least one stay of execution because of cancer and other health problems, but state officials continue to push for his death.
‘He could live another 20 years’
At the time of Gifford’s disappearance, Sochor was free on probation from a 1980 rape conviction.
“I knew him as a child, and he was a bully,” said Frank Frandel, who grew up as a family friend in Portland, Michigan. “I could believe he could be violent like that.”
Frandel offered no sympathy for Sochor’s advanced age, pointing out that Sochor’s father will turn 99 this year.
“He could live another 20 years,” Frandel said. “So no, I don’t feel sorry for him being at that age.”
