Published: Aug. 29, 2024 at 12:13 PM EDT|Updated: Aug. 29, 2024 at 12:27 PM EDT
RAIFORD, Fla. (WCJB/NSF) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday morning refused to halt the scheduled 6 p.m. execution of Loran Cole, who was sent to Death Row in the 1994 murder of Florida State University student John Edwards in the Ocala National Forest.
The Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal or to grant a stay of execution. A one-paragraph decision did not explain the court’s reasoning.
Cole’s attorneys went to the Supreme Court on Sunday after state appeals failed. They primarily argued that the case should be sent back to a lower court for an evidentiary hearing about whether the state’s lethal-injection procedures would cause “needless pain and suffering” because of Cole’s symptoms from Parkinson’s disease.
“Cole now experiences shaking in both of his arms from his neck to his fingertips and in his legs,” a petition to the Supreme Court said. “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 affect the placement of the intravenous lines necessary to carry out an execution by lethal injection.”
But Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office urged justices to reject the argument, in part because Cole has had Parkinson’s symptoms since at least 2017. Cole’s attorneys argued that executing him by lethal injection could violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
“Cole argues that this (Supreme) Court should stay the execution because it presents constitutional issues which this court should be free of time constraint to properly consider,” lawyers in Moody’s office wrote. “He laments that the court only has several days to consider the issue. However, this supposed conundrum is one created by Cole’s own doing. Cole knew for at least seven years that he was suffering symptoms of Parkinson’s disease but delayed bringing any claim challenging lethal injection as applied to him until his death warrant was signed. Nothing prevented him from doing so.”
Several groups opposed to the death penalty have planned a vigil outside the state prison in Raiford.
“Florida has a long storied history,” said Maria Deliberato, a member of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “We have the most death row exonerations from any other state in the nation. We have the lowest threshold for imposing the death penalty. So, I think people are listening. I think it’s difficult because it’s an emotional issue.”
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The Florida Supreme Court last week upheld a Marion County circuit judge’s decision that rejected Cole’s arguments.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 29 signed a death warrant for Cole, 57, who would be the first inmate executed at Florida State Prison since October, when Michael Duane Zack was put to death by lethal injection for a 1996 murder in Escambia County.
Edwards went to the national forest to camp with his sister, a student at Eckerd College. Cole and another man, William Paul, joined the brother and sister at their campsite.
After they decided to walk to a pond, Cole knocked Edwards’ sister to the ground and ultimately handcuffed her, according to court records. Paul took the sister up a trail, and Edwards died from a slashed throat and blows to the head that fractured his skull. Edwards’ sister was sexually assaulted and was tied to two trees the next morning before freeing herself. (In most cases, The News Service of Florida does not identify sexual-assault victims by name.)
In addition to the Parkinson’s disease issue, Cole’s attorneys argued in state courts that the execution should be halted because of abuse he suffered as a teen at the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna. The attorneys said the jury that recommended a death sentence did not know about the abuse he suffered at the state reform school. Also, the attorneys pointed to a law that DeSantis signed this year to compensate some victims of abuse at Dozier, though the law would not apply to Cole.
But Marion County Circuit Judge Robert Hodges and the Florida Supreme Court refused to block the execution.
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