Florida executed 19 killers in 2025 – more than any state in eight decades.
Now a man on death row for strangling a teenage girl wants the governor front and center for number ten.
Dennis Sochor just sent Ron DeSantis a personal invitation to his execution – and the message behind it tells you everything about how the left fights justice in America.
The Crime That Put Sochor on Death Row
It was New Year's Eve 1981.
Patricia Gifford was 18 years old, out celebrating at the Banana Boat bar in Broward County when she met Dennis Sochor and his brother Gary.
She left with them – expecting breakfast.
Instead, Sochor drove her to a secluded spot and killed her when she rejected him.
He confessed. Three times.
Her body was never found.
https://twitter.com/FinalVerdic/status/2075340476392079510?s=20
It wasn't his first violent crime.
The year before, he had been convicted of abducting and r**ing a woman in Oakland Park.
He spent 44 years working the legal system.
This week, the Florida Supreme Court – unanimously – rejected his final appeal.
His execution is set for July 14.
The Stunt and What It Really Means
A group calling itself the "Execution Intervention Project" is behind the invitation to DeSantis.
Their reverend, Jeff Hood, says DeSantis should be required to watch every execution he orders.
"If Governor DeSantis wants these executions to continue," Hood said, "he should have to be part of these executions."
Let's be clear about what this is.
It's not a moral argument.
It's a pressure campaign – the same playbook used every time abolitionists can't win in court.
Make the process uncomfortable. Personalize the accountability. Hope the optics shake someone loose.
DeSantis doesn't appear to be shaking.
He's signed 11 death warrants this year alone.
And he said exactly what he believes about the pace: "Justice delayed is justice denied."
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Sochor's lawyers tried every angle.
They argued Florida's lethal injection protocol – a three-drug combination – creates a risk of suffering akin to drowning as fluid fills the lungs.
They asked for a firing squad instead.
The Florida Supreme Court didn't buy it.
The autopsy evidence they cited dated back to 2017.
The protocol hadn't changed.
The claim was untimely, the court ruled – all seven justices agreeing.
Florida Has Executed Nine People This Year and DeSantis Has Not Held One Press Conference to Explain Himself
This execution will be Florida's tenth in 2026.
Florida executed 19 people in 2025 – the most in the state since 1936 and nearly 40% of every execution carried out across the entire United States that year.
That's not a bug.
That's the policy.
DeSantis made a deliberate decision to move through Florida's death row at a pace that previous governors – Republican and Democrat alike – never attempted.
He met with the victims' families. He listened. He made a promise that justice would not rot on a shelf indefinitely.
Patricia Gifford's family has waited 44 years to see the man who confessed to killing her face the sentence a jury imposed.
They want DeSantis to feel something. To hesitate. To see the face of the man dying and reconsider whether all those warrants were worth it.
He isn't hesitating.
When a reporter asked him last year why the pace had accelerated, he didn't apologize.
He said he owed it to victims' families to make sure this ran "very smoothly."
The left has no remaining legal argument.
The appeals are gone.
So they fall back on theater, hoping a headline about a governor watching an execution creates enough squeamishness to slow the machinery of justice.
Patricia Gifford never got a last request.
Sources:
- CBS Miami Staff, "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs death warrant for man convicted in Broward murder," CBS Miami, June 11, 2026.
- Tampa Free Press Staff, "Florida Supreme Court Clears Way For Execution Of 1981 Murderer Dennis Sochor," Tampa Free Press, July 8, 2026.
- NBC Miami Staff, "Florida sets up third execution in 2026 as state leads U.S. death penalty surge," NBC Miami, January 30, 2026.
