TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the latest motion for a stay in the scheduled execution of Dennis Michael Sochor, who is set to die next Tuesday for the death of a woman he met at a New Year’s celebration in a Broward County bar 44 years ago.
In a another order, justices lifted a stay that delayed the execution of James Aren Duckett, 68, a former Mascotte police officer convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in 1987.
Duckett, 68, was scheduled to be executed at Florida State Prison on March 31, but the justices imposed a stay to allow for the completion of DNA testing and a subsequent statistical analysis of the DNA sample.
As the testing and analysis reportedly provided no new evidence to clear Duckett, the State Attorney General’s office stated in its June 17 motion to lift the stay that “prolonging the stay is unjustified as Duckett has no substantial grounds to delay execution of his death sentence.”
As the warrant expired, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office replied “stay tuned” when asked April 6 if a new death warrant would be signed.
In Sochor’s case, the Supreme Court rejected his assertion that the state’s three-drug lethal injection protocol violates his constitutional rights involving due process under the 14th Amendment and cruel and unusual punishments under the Eighth Amendment.
READ MORE: Why Florida is leading the nation in executions
In a motion filed June 29, attorneys for Sochor, 74, claimed the initial dose of etomidate is insufficient to render an inmate unconscious for more than five minutes. They also noted the combination of etomidate and the other two drugs used results in flash pulmonary edema where the lungs fill with fluid, making it difficult to breathe and creating a sensation like drowning.
As an alternative, Sochor argued bullets from a firing squad would cause quicker disruption of blood flow to the brain.
“This would cause the inmate to lose consciousness within three to five seconds,” the appeal stated.
Sochor, whose convictions and death sentence became final in 1993, claimed his challenge was based on “newly discovered” autopsies of executed inmates from 2017 to 2026, which reveal every inmate suffered from pulmonary edema.
The Supreme Court, noting the postconviction claims raised must be filed within one year of his conviction and sentence becoming final, noted the “autopsies have been discoverable since the first one was conducted in 2017.”
The Supreme Court also stated that the current three-drug protocol has remained essentially unchanged in that time.
In the recent motion for a stay, Sochor’s team also claimed the state failed to disclose a 2022 letter from a Broward County Sheriff’s Office detective to his brother Gary Sochor.
The Supreme Court noted the “letter sought any information that might lead to the recovery of (Patricia) Gifford’s body.”
According to court documents, Sochor and his brother met Gifford, 18, and her friend at the Banana Boat in Broward County to celebrate New Year’s Eve 1981.
After Gifford’s friend went to sleep in a car in the parking lot, she left with the brothers in Dennis Sochor’s work truck, intending to get breakfast. Instead, Dennis Sochor stopped his truck in a secluded spot and took Gifford out of the vehicle.
Sochor confessed that when Gifford refused to have sex with him, he became angry, choked her until she died, and disposed of her body, which was never found, records state. Sochor told police his brother wasn’t with him at the time.
Police began searching for Gifford after her friend called the police.
A photo of Gifford at the New Year’s celebration with an unknown man was shown on the news and Sochor’s roommate testified that he left after seeing the photo.
Sochor wasn’t arrested until 1986, when he was stopped for running a red light in DeKalb County, Georgia.
Prior to the murder, Sochor was sentenced to a year in jail and five years’ probation for the abduction and rape of an Oakland Park woman in 1980.
