Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a death warrant for an inmate convicted in the 1994 murder of a Florida State University student who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister.
Loran Cole, 57, is scheduled to be executed Aug. 29 at Florida State Prison, according to documents posted Monday evening on the Florida Supreme Court website. Cole would be 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.
Cole was sentenced to death in the February 1994 murder of John Edwards, who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister, a student at Eckerd College, court records from past Supreme Court appeals show.
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, the records said. The men subdued John Edwards, and Cole went through the victims’ pockets and took their belongings.
Paul took the sister up a trail, and John Edwards died from a slashed throat and blows to the head that fractured his skull, according to the court records. 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.)
Cole and Paul were arrested in Ocala, and Cole was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery and sexual battery, the court records and Florida Department of Corrections records show. Paul, now 51, pleaded no contest to murder, kidnapping and robbery charges and was sentenced to life in prison. He is an inmate at Cross City Correctional Institution.
The signing of the death warrant Monday likely will touch off a flurry of legal activity. With the scheduled execution a month away, the Florida Supreme Court issued an order that said proceedings would be “expedited.”
DeSantis has signed nine death warrants in his tenure. Florida has executed 105 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, including six last year, information on the Department of Corrections website shows.
Zack, 54, was executed Oct. 3 in the 1996 murder of Ravonne Smith during a crime spree that also included killing another woman.
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.
–Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida
Bill Boots says
Good riddance Cole!
Tim says
Justified! Thank you Governor.
Anne Smith says
Why do they wait so long, to sign a death warrants? The victims never had a chance. The longer you keep inmates, the more it costs taxpayers.
JimboXYZ says
30 years after the fact, unfortunate that the accomplice Paul isn’t scheduled for the same demise for the same date.
Ray W. says
Ohio’s legislature is not known for its liberalism. Nonetheless, the Ohio Legislative Service Commission released in 2023 a report drawn from a study of a “collection of quantitative and qualitative studies in other states.”
The Commission estimated that the cost of capital cases ranges from $1 million to $3 million per case. “If these estimates apply to Ohio, then the extra cost of imposing the death penalty 121 times on the 119 people currently on Death Row might range from $121 million to $363 million. … “[I]ts a stunning amount of money to spend on a program that doesn’t achieve its purpose.”
Florida, since 1976, has released 30 inmates from our Death Row after it was determined that they did not commit the crime; they were exonerated. Many of the exonerations have come from DNA testing of evidence. Other cases mandate release for a variety of reasons. It is almost certain that Florida has executed innocent defendants.
Pennsylvania authorities just agreed to pay a Death Row inmate $9.1 million after it was determined that he was innocent of the charge. It only took 23 years to make that determination.
FlaglerLive readers would be stunned if they knew how many times prosecutors fool themselves into believing they have enough evidence to kill, when in reality they never had it. 30 times detectives have arrested innocent people on charges eligible for death. 30 times prosecutors have filed Notices of Intent to Seek Death. 30 times, juries have found innocent people guilty. 30 times, judges have imposed death sentences. At each step of the process each actor was wrong.
The process takes so long and costs so much because the courts have long known that if an innocent person is killed by the state, no one can fix it later. You can’t say, oops!
The case that stunned me the most took 23 years, too, to resolve.
A woman who had been brutally raped and beaten picked out a man she saw in a convenience store. He fought the charges but was convicted. 19 years later, DNA came back proving that he could not have been the rapist, another man had raped the woman.
Did he get out immediately? No, because the prosecutor, after admitting that the man could not have committed the crime, argued that preserving a jury’s verdict that had been affirmed on direct appeal was more important to society than releasing an actually innocent man. And the trial judge bought the State’s argument!
It took four more years from DNA evidence to actual release from prison. The appellate court wrote that it was not possible to find that actual innocence of a citizen was less important to society than a jury’s verdict.
After over 30 years of prosecution and defense, I can easily suggest that the average FlaglerLive reader has no idea just how cavalier some prosecutors are about their charge to ensure that justice prevail. You have no idea. Many are great at their jobs, but some?
And police officers? I had a case where a woman driving a rental car was pulled over. She had just picked up her brother from an evening class at DSC; he had one or two prior non-violent misdemeanor cases in his history. They actually wrote in the complaint affidavit that they used tape to pick up lint from the floorboard. With a flashlight, they used tweezers to pluck crumbs from the tape, which they claimed was enough to provide a positive field test for cocaine, but there wasn’t enough to send anything to the lab to run a test that a prosecutor could use in trial. Still, someone felt is appropriate to arrest for “possession.”
The case lasted about three minutes after I called the intake prosecutor, who read the file as I talked.
Why would this happen? Earlier, a man had fled from police in another city during the hour and a half that my client was in class. The stopping officers had identified the car from the prior dispatch from the other city and stopped it, but there was no identifying information provided by the pursuing officer about the fleeing driver except that he was a Black male.
Atwp says
Anne that is a great question. I often ask the same question.
Michael D says
If you are found guilty of Murder with Evidence, Witnesses, Video, and DNA, The Killer should be Executed within a month so the Taxpayer’s will not pay for the Killer’s life in Prison. This way if someone decides to KILL SOMEONE, that person will think before doing the Killing of someone knowing that if they get caught, they will DIE in a month. I think the Killer would think twice before their actions. GOD BLESS AMERICA.