Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a death warrant for Dennis Michael Sochor, 74, convicted of strangling an 18-year-old woman he met at a Broward County bar on New Year’s Eve 1981. Sochor is scheduled to die by lethal injection on July 14 at Florida State Prison.
According to court records, Patricia Gifford met Sochor at the Banana Boat bar while celebrating New Year’s Eve. She left with Sochor and his brother, ostensibly to get breakfast, but Sochor stopped in a secluded location, and when Gifford refused his sexual advances, he choked her to death and disposed of her body, which was never recovered. Sochor wasn’t arrested until 1986, when a routine traffic stop in Georgia led to his identification. He was convicted on three recorded confessions and sentenced to death in November 1987.
This marks DeSantis’s 11th death warrant of 2026. Florida executed 19 inmates in 2025, a modern-era record.
