Florida’s Governor DeSantis Schedules First Execution of 2024 for Dozier Reform School Survivor After 10-Month Execution Hiatus

On July 29, 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the state’s first exe­cu­tion war­rant of 2024, sched­ul­ing an exe­cu­tion date for Loran Cole (pic­tured) in just thir­ty days, on August 29, 2024. Mr. Cole’s exe­cu­tion war­rant comes near­ly ten months after Florida’s last exe­cu­tion, which was the last of the state’s six exe­cu­tions car­ried out in 2023. Mr. Cole was sen­tenced to death in 1995 for the mur­der of a Florida State University stu­dent in Marion County, Florida. Following the issuance of the exe­cu­tion war­rant, attor­neys for Mr. Cole filed a motion ask­ing a judge to vacate his death sen­tence, argu­ing that Florida is ​“com­plic­it in the hor­rif­ic and trag­ic” abuse that Mr. Cole expe­ri­enced after being sent to the ​“noto­ri­ous” Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. In 1984, at age 17, Mr. Cole was sent to Dozier, where he lived through ​“tor­tur­ous treat­ment.” Dozier was a reform school oper­at­ed by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice at the time of its clo­sure in 2011. A high num­ber of unmarked graves on the prop­er­ty evi­denced the harsh con­di­tions, vio­lence, and bru­tal treat­ment of juve­niles who were sent there. Former stu­dents have shared with Florida law­mak­ers details of the abuse and tor­ture they suf­fered at the hands of Dozier staff. 

In the motion filed by Mr. Cole’s attor­neys, they write that “[Mr.] Cole is plead­ing for a life sen­tence, because of what Florida employ­ees did to him while he was at Dozier.” They added that ​“con­sid­er­ing how Florida has admit­ted to oppress­ing vul­ner­a­ble youth at Dozier, the fact that [Mr.] Cole was a stu­dent there, let alone suf­fered hor­rif­ic abuse while con­fined, changes the per­cep­tion and impact of the mit­i­ga­tion his jury was pre­sent­ed.” As explained in fil­ings sub­mit­ted to the court, Mr. Cole’s sup­pressed mem­o­ry of the abuse he suf­fered while at Dozier reemerged after watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary detail­ing the abuse oth­ers suf­fered at Dozier. Mr. Cole claims that while at Dozier, he was raped by a guard, beat­en twice a week, and had both of his legs bro­ken after he tried to escape Dozier dur­ing his six-month stay.

Gov. DeSantis signed Mr. Cole’s exe­cu­tion war­rant just a month after sign­ing a bill that sets aside $20 mil­lion to com­pen­sate indi­vid­u­als who were sent to Dozier and anoth­er reform school between 1940 and 1975 ​“who were sub­ject­ed to men­tal, phys­i­cal or sex­u­al abuse per­pe­trat­ed by school per­son­nel.” While Mr. Cole is not eli­gi­ble for this com­pen­sa­tion, his attor­neys allege that if his ​“jury had known about the severe abuse that hap­pened at Dozier, and Florida’s will­ing­ness to acknowl­edge the severe prob­lems at Dozier to the extent that des­ig­nat­ed vic­tims are enti­tled to repa­ra­tions, there is a rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty the new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence would yield a less severe sen­tence.” Attorneys for the state allege that Mr. Cole’s alle­ga­tions of abuse ​“are hard­ly new” and that ​“there is no rea­son to believe that this evi­dence of his treat­ment at Dozier would like­ly lead to a dif­fer­ent result in [Mr.] Cole’s sentence.”

Maria DeLiberato, the Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told The News Service of Florida that ​“in pass­ing the com­pen­sa­tion bill for Dozier sur­vivors, the state of Florida rec­og­nized its direct respon­si­bil­i­ty for the pro­found and life­long impact of hor­rif­ic tor­ture and abuse those men suf­fered there. For the state of Florida to turn around less than a month lat­er and say they are jus­ti­fied in killing one of those sur­vivors is uncon­scionable.” According to Melanie Kalmanson, an attor­ney and author of the ​“Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty,” Mr. Cole is one of sev­en for­mer Dozier stu­dents who have been sen­tenced to death in Florida. Mr. Cole’s motion for a vaca­tion of his sen­tence was denied, but his attor­neys have filed an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. In this appeal, attor­neys for Mr. Cole also argue that the court should grant a stay of exe­cu­tion in order to hold an evi­den­tiary hear­ing to dis­cuss the ​“need­less pain and suf­fer­ing” Mr. Cole would expe­ri­ence dur­ing a lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tion because of symp­toms from his Parkinson’s dis­ease. According to the motion, “[Mr.] 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 intra­venous lines nec­es­sary to car­ry out an exe­cu­tion by lethal injection.”

Gov. DeSantis, who was run­ning for the Republican pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee in 2023, did not sign any exe­cu­tion war­rants after he dropped out of the pres­i­den­tial race, lead­ing some to believe he used the 2023 exe­cu­tions to bol­ster his ​“tough on crime” plat­form. Florida gov­er­nors are giv­en com­plete dis­cre­tion when it comes to iden­ti­fy­ing pris­on­ers for whom exe­cu­tion dates will be set, unlike some oth­er states, which require courts to review and approve requests from offi­cials for exe­cu­tion war­rants. In addi­tion to sign­ing the 2023 exe­cu­tion war­rants, Gov. DeSantis urged the Florida Legislature to pass a law remov­ing the una­nim­i­ty require­ment for cap­i­tal juries to sen­tence some­one to death. After Gov. DeSantis signed this law in April 2023, a death sen­tence requires a vote of only 8 jurors. Along with the low­ered thresh­old, Gov. DeSantis backed and signed a bill allow­ing the death penal­ty for the sex­u­al bat­tery of a child under the age of 12, direct­ly chal­leng­ing the United States Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008), which held that a death sen­tence for a crime that did not result in the death of the vic­tim is dis­pro­por­tion­ate and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the 8^th Amendment.