Death Penalty

About 30 years have passed since Loran was found guilty of both first-degree murder and sexual battery.

Death row inmate Loran Cole is appealing the state's lethal injection procedures to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody argues that Cole waited too long to raise his claims.

Loran Cole is slated to be executed Thursday for raping a woman and murdering her brother in 1994. Now Cole is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution.

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

Loran Cole, 57, was sent to Death Row in the February 1994 murder of Florida State University student John Edwards, who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister, a student at Eckerd College, court records show.

Marion County Circuit Judge Robert Hodges on Thursday refused to vacate Cole’s death sentence.

The ruling likely will set off a flurry of appeals in the runup to the scheduled Aug. 29 execution of Loran Cole. 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 show.

Loran Cole, 57, 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 show. Cole was 17 when he was sent to Dozier in 1984.

John Edwards was murdered in 1994. Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a death warrant for Loran Cole, who would be the first inmate executed in Florida since October. Edwards's sister was an Eckerd College student.

A 2023 law that lowered the number of jurors needed to recommend the death penalty has resulted in a "quintessential game of chance" for inmates being resentenced because of changes in the state's death-penalty process and unconstitutionally "silences Black voices," groups are arguing in what could be a pivotal Florida Supreme Court case.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to block the execution after Michael Zack III’s lawyers had argued he was a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Okeechobee County prosecutors recently filed a court notice saying they will seek a death sentence against 36-year-old Mathew Flores. He is charged with first-degree murder for the Jan. 30 slaying of 74-year-old Gary Levin.