Florida set to execute two 74-year-olds; both the oldest to be executed in state’s modern history

Dusty Ray Spencer, Dennis Sochor Dusty Ray Spencer (L), 74, is scheduled to die Thursday (June 25, 2026) in Florida's death chamber in Starke. 19 days later, Dennis Sochor, also 74, is scheduled to be put to death.

By Harold Goodridge

STARKE, Fla. — Florida’s scheduled execution Thursday evening of Dusty Ray Spencer, 74, will make him the oldest person put to death in the state since Florida’s reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

Nineteen days after Spencer’s scheduled execution, Florida is set to put Dennis Sochor to death. The 74-year-old man is 12 days younger than Spencer.

Jeff Hood, Spencer’s spiritual advisor, held a news conference recently calling Spencer’s scheduled death a “nursing home execution.”

Spencer stabbed his wife Kathy to death in Orange County in 1992. He was sentenced to death later that year.

Sochor killed an 18-year-old woman he met at a bar 44 years ago during a New Year’s celebration in Broward County.

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