Dusty Ray Spencer was executed Thursday at Florida State Prison near Starke and became the oldest inmate put to death in Florida's modern history. He was 74. The state declared him dead at 6:10 p.m. after a three-drug injection.
That is why his name is drawing attention now: Florida did not just carry out another execution, it crossed an age mark that had stood for decades. Before Thursday, the oldest inmates executed in the state had both been 72, according to Florida Department of Correction records dating to 1924. Samuel Lee Smithers was executed at that age on Oct. 14, 2025, and R. Charlie Gifford was 72 when he was executed on Feb. 21, 1951.
Spencer had been convicted of the 1992 stabbing death of his wife, Karen. By the time the lethal drugs began flowing, he was strapped to a metal table with an IV inserted in his arm and had been asked whether he wanted to make a final statement. He answered with a short apology to the family and a prayer, saying, “Sorry, sorry to the family. Into thy hands I commit my spirit and my soul. I’m on my way, Lord. I’m on my way. Amen.”
The end came quickly after that. He spoke, the drugs started immediately, and after a few minutes of labored breathing he stopped moving. The warden shook him and called his name several times, but there was no response. A medic checked his vital signs before the declaration of death. The image left behind was not of a man fighting the sentence, but of one delivering a last plea for mercy in the same room where the state finished the case against him.
That plea stood in sharp contrast with the history that put him there. Spencer was arrested after choking and threatening to kill Karen Spencer in December 1991. While in jail, he called his wife and warned her that when he got out, he was going to finish what he had started. On Jan. 18, 1992, he beat her teenage son with a clothes iron when the boy tried to stop him from attacking his mother. About a week later, the son found Spencer hitting Karen in the head with a brick. The teen tried to shoot him with a rifle, but the gun misfired. Spencer then threatened the boy with a knife, and the boy ran for help before police found Karen dead with several stab wounds to the chest.
Florida scheduled another 74-year-old inmate, Dennis Sochor, for execution on July 14, and that is the next date prison officials and the public will be watching. Sochor was convicted of killing a woman just hours into 1982 after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party. Thursday's execution was the ninth in Florida this year, a pace that has already made 2025 one of the state’s busiest years for capital punishment under Gov. Ron DeSantis.
