Florida sets July 14 execution date in Broward murder case

Florida has set July 14 as the execution date for Dennis Sochor, the 74-year-old Broward County man convicted in the 1981 rape and murder of Patricia Gifford. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke, and the state’s execution window runs from noon on July 14 through noon on July 21.

Sochor’s case is tied to a Broward scene that still defines it: he met 18-year-old Patricia Gifford at a New Year’s celebration in a Broward County bar, and court records say her body was never recovered. A jury later recommended death by a vote of 10-2, and Sochor was sentenced in 1989.

The legal fight has lasted far longer than the underlying crime. Florida Supreme Court records show the case in the court’s system by the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Sochor filed postconviction litigation in 2009 and again in 2016. Those filings included claims that prosecutors withheld favorable evidence, among them an alleged immunity deal involving his brother, Gary Sochor, whose testimony played a central role in the conviction. The later filing also raised Brady-related claims and allegations of newly discovered evidence.

That long record is why the case is back before Broward readers now. Advocates opposing execution say the brothers’ competing accounts leave the conviction unreliable, and they argue that Sochor has already spent decades in prison. Sochor’s military service also gives the case a different profile from many recent Florida death cases, which have increasingly come back to the forefront as the state has moved through executions at a faster pace.

Florida executed 19 people in 2025, the most in the modern era, and Sochor is one of two inmates scheduled for execution in July 2026. The other is Dominick Occhicone, whose execution is set for July 28. Sochor’s case, built in Broward nearly 44 years ago, now sits inside a death-penalty system that is moving far more aggressively than it did through the earlier phases of his appeals.