More than 30 years after he murdered a Florida State University student who was on a camping trip in the Ocala National Forest, Loran Cole was executed by lethal injection Thursday evening at Florida State Prison.
Cole, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. and became the first inmate executed in Florida this year. He could be seen breathing heavily and briefly trembling after the lethal injection process started at 6 p.m. but did not move after 6:06 p.m.
Cole did not have any last words, though he looked up and appeared to nod to a witness who was seated in a viewing area.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 29 signed a death warrant for Cole, who was convicted of killing FSU student John Edwards, 18, in February 1994.
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.)
The Edwards family did not attend the execution. But the victims’ parents, Timothy and Victoria Edwards, released a statement that described the crime as “horrendous” and “senseless” and said it shattered the family.
The parents said their children asked for mercy, but that “Mr. Cole did not extend mercy to our children.” They added that Cole “does not deserve mercy.”
The execution came several hours after the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday morning refused to take up an appeal by Cole’s attorneys or grant a stay. The Florida Supreme Court also rejected arguments by Cole’s attorneys last week.
Cole awoke at 6 a.m. Thursday and ate a last meal of pizza, ice cream, M&Ms and soda, said Ted Veerman, communications director for the Florida Department of Corrections. Cole had two visitors, including his son.
In their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Cole’s attorneys primarily argued that his 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.”
As is common, the U.S. Supreme Court did not explain its reasons for turning down the appeal.
Cole could be seen Thursday evening with what appeared to be an intravenous line in his left arm.
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.
Cole was the first inmate executed in Florida since October, when Michael Duane Zack was put to death by lethal injection for a 1996 murder in Escambia County.
The state last year also executed James Phillip Barnes in the 1988 murder of a woman in her Melbourne condominium; Duane Owen in the 1984 murder of a Palm Beach County woman; Darryl Barwick in the 1986 murder of a woman in her Panama City apartment; Louis Gaskin in the 1989 murders of a couple in Flagler County; and Donald David Dillbeck in the 1990 murder of a woman during a carjacking in a Tallahassee mall parking lot.
Dillbeck was the first person executed since Gary Ray Bowles was put to death by lethal injection in August 2019 for a 1994 murder in Jacksonville.