MIAMI — In Florida, the last individual to face execution was 74 years old, marking the oldest age for an execution in the state during contemporary times. The next two executions planned involve even older inmates.
Set to take place by month’s end, this string of executions puts a spotlight on the aging population within the nation’s death row. Among those scheduled to be executed is an 80-year-old man convicted for the 1986 murder of his ex-girlfriend’s parents. Should this execution proceed, he would be only the second person over 80 to be executed in U.S. history.
This situation raises ethical debates, with some questioning the morality of executing prisoners who are near death due to natural causes. Conversely, others argue it highlights the balance between extensive appeals ensuring justice and constitutional rights, and the extended delays in delivering justice.
“Is there an intent here to deny these inmates the escape of natural death?” asked Rev. Dustin Feddon, a Catholic priest who’s worked with death row inmates in Florida since 2013. While emphasizing the church’s stance against capital punishment, he remarked, “Executing those who are elderly and fragile is particularly harsh and unusual.”
However, Marilyn Gifford, whose sister’s killer is scheduled to face execution on Tuesday, holds a different perspective.
“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, who was convicted of fatally stabbing his wife in 1992, became the oldest person executed in Florida in modern history. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the 74-year-old’s appeal that his liver disease rendered him susceptible to excruciating pain from lethal injection.
Dennis Sochor, convicted of killing 18-year-old Patricia Gifford just hours into 1982 after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party, would be just a week older if his execution is carried out 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 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.”
Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.