Florida Supreme Court rejects execution of inmate convicted of murdering student – ​​WFTV

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Supreme Court on Friday unanimously rejected an appeal by a death row inmate convicted three decades ago in the killing of a Florida State University student, likely setting up a last-minute appeal in federal court before an execution scheduled for next week.

Loran Cole's lawyers filed an appeal in state court after Governor Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant in late July that would lead to Cole's execution Thursday at Florida State Prison.

The Supreme Court ruling rejected a number of arguments, including claims related to the abuse Cole suffered as a teenager at the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.

Cole's lawyers claimed that abuse at the now-closed reformatory contributed to his behavior. They also pointed to a recently passed law that provides a compensation program for people abused at Jackson County School and Okeechobee School in South Florida. The law represents “newly discovered evidence” that warrants a reconsideration of Cole's death sentence.

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The law, passed by the Republican-dominated legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, provides $20 million for people who attended those schools between 1940 and 1975. Cole, who was 17 when he was sent to Dozier in 1984, would not be eligible for the compensation.

The Supreme Court affirmed an August 8 decision by Marion County District Judge Robert Hodges, saying the new law did not constitute “newly discovered evidence” requiring reconsideration.

“Indeed, we have regularly found that resolutions, consensus opinions, articles, research findings and the like do not meet the standards,” said the opinion of Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz and Justices Charles Canady, John Couriel, Renatha Francis Jamie Grosshans, Jorge Labarga and Meredith Sasso.

Cole's lawyers have argued for years that his six-month stay at Dozier played a role in the conduct that led to the 1994 murder of Florida State student John Edwards, who was on a camping trip in the Ocala National Forest.

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But the 2024 law gave the legal arguments a new twist: Cole's lawyers argued that the compensation program showed that the state admitted its “complicity” in the mistreatment of students in the reform schools.

Cole said he was raped and beaten at least twice a week by a guard during his six-month detention at Dozier, and that both of his legs were broken when he tried to escape during his six-month stay at Dozier, according to court documents more than a decade old.

“This horrific place helped create the Loran Cole who sits on death row today,” his lawyers argued in a 2011 appeal to the Supreme Court.

But Friday's decision said Cole's allegations about the school were not new and could not be made years after a deadline for such arguments had passed.

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“The State of Florida's decision to now compensate some of the individuals who attended the school does not revive Cole's previously denied post-conviction claims,” ​​the statement said.

Court documents say Cole suppressed memories of his experiences at Dozier, but the memories resurfaced when he saw a documentary about abuse at the school in 2009.

But Friday's ruling refuted the repressed memory argument, pointing to the Hodges ruling, which found that the Dozier case was raised in an “investigative report” prior to a jury's unanimous recommendation of the death penalty in 1995.

Opponents of the death penalty, however, said Cole's trauma in the Dozier case deserves reconsideration.

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“It is troubling that the state has acknowledged the horrors of what happened in Dozier through recent legislation, but at the same time is seeking to execute Cole without giving him the opportunity to present his claims in court for the abuse he suffered in Dozier. Today's court ruling brings the state one step closer to carrying out Cole's execution,” Melanie Kalmanson, attorney and author of the blog “Tracking Florida's Death Penalty,” told the News Service of Florida on Friday.

The judges also rejected arguments related to Cole's Parkinson's symptoms, which his lawyers argued could cause “unnecessary pain and suffering” during the lethal three-drug injection.

“Cole's Parkinson's symptoms will make it impossible for Florida to safely and humanely carry out his execution because his involuntary body movements will interfere with the placement of the intravenous lines necessary for an execution by lethal injection,” said a brief filed by Cole's lawyers.

But the Supreme Court decision said Cole, 57, who has suffered from Parkinson's disease since at least 2017, “did not present any arguments regarding the method of execution until the governor signed a death warrant on July 29.”

“Notwithstanding the foregoing, Cole’s claim is without merit,” the decision states.

Florida's lethal injection protocol requires the intravenous administration of three drugs: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heartbeat.

Cole's appeal did not meet the minimum requirement of proving “that the method of execution poses a substantial and imminent risk that is certain or very likely to cause serious illness and unnecessary suffering,” the Supreme Court's decision said.

“We have previously rejected objections to the … protocol based on the possibility of involuntary movements,” the ruling states. “And we have repeatedly recognized that the prison service has a reasonable expectation that it will comply with the lethal injection protocol. … That protocol contains safeguards to ensure that the condemned person is unconscious during the execution.”

According to court records, Cole was sentenced to death for the February 1994 murder of Edwards. Edwards had gone camping in the Ocala National Forest with his sister, a student at Eckerd College.

Cole and another man, William Paul, joined the siblings at their campsite. When they decided to go to a pond, Cole knocked Edwards' sister to the ground and eventually handcuffed her, records say. Paul led the sister up a trail, and John Edwards died from a slit throat and blows to the head that fractured his skull, according to court records. Edwards' sister was sexually assaulted and tied to two trees the next morning before she was able to free herself. (In most cases, the News Service of Florida does not identify victims of sexual assault by name.)

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