A Florida death penalty appeal cites abuse at the Dozier School for Boys

A Death Row inmate who spent time at the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and is the first prisoner scheduled to be executed this year in Florida is asking a judge to vacate his death sentence, arguing the state is “complicit in the horrific and tragic” abuse at the reform school that “contributed to his life choices.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis last week signed a death warrant for Loran Cole to be executed by lethal injection Aug. 29 at Florida State Prison. Cole, 57, was convicted in the 1994 murder of a Florida State University student who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister. Cole would be the first inmate executed in Florida since October.

Cole was 17 when he was sent to Dozier in 1984, and his time at the now-shuttered Marianna facility is one of the key arguments his lawyers are making as part of flurry of legal action to try to prevent the execution.

A motion filed Saturday by Cole’s lawyers in Marion County circuit court said jurors who recommended a death sentence for Cole in 1995 never learned of the “torturous treatment” he suffered while confined at Dozier.

The reform school was closed in 2011 after 111 years of operation. Researchers have found remains of dozens of students buried at the site, and other former students have never been located. Former Dozier students, known as the “White House Boys,” for years have shared with state lawmakers intimate details of the abuse and torture they suffered as children.

“Cole is pleading for a life sentence, because of what Florida employees did to him while he was at Dozier. Considering how Florida has admitted to oppressing vulnerable youth at Dozier, the fact that Cole was a student there, let alone suffered horrific abuse while confined, changes the perception and impact of the mitigation his jury was presented,” Cole’s lawyers, Ali Shakoor and Adrienne Joy Shepherd, wrote.

According to court filings, Cole’s suppressed memories of his experiences at Dozier resurfaced more than a decade ago after he watched a documentary about abuse at the school.

Cole said he was raped by a guard, beaten at least twice a week and had both of his legs broken by staff after trying to escape during his six-month stint at Dozier, court documents dating back more than a decade said.

“That horrible place helped create the Loran Cole who sits on death row today,” his lawyers argued in an appeal filed at the Florida Supreme Court in 2011.

DeSantis ordered Cole’s execution less than a month after signing a bill that set aside $20 million to compensate people who attended Dozier and another state reform school between 1940 and 1975 and “who were subjected to mental, physical or sexual abuse perpetrated by school personnel.”

While Cole wouldn’t be eligible for compensation, the new law has added a twist to arguments that he should be spared.

“If Cole’s 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,” Cole’s lawyers argued in the motion filed Saturday. “There is a reasonable probability a jury presented with the newly discovered information would recommend a sentence of life for Cole.”

But lawyers in Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office and State Attorney William Gladson, whose office prosecuted Cole, said the condemned inmate’s experiences at Dozier don’t warrant special attention because the issue already has been considered as part of his lengthy death-sentence appeals.

Cole’s allegations about mistreatment at Dozier “are hardly new,” the state’s lawyers wrote in a document filed Sunday, adding that Cole’s attorneys raised the issue more than a dozen years ago.

In addition, the jury considered abuse Cole suffered as a child as a mitigating factor before recommending the death penalty, the state’s lawyers wrote.

“There is no reason to believe that this evidence of his treatment at Dozier would likely lead to a different result in Cole’s sentence,” the state’s attorneys argued.

Marion County Circuit Judge Robert Hodges this week denied Cole’s lawyers’ request for a stay of execution and said Tuesday he would decide other parts of the appeal before a 3 p.m. Friday deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court.

The death warrant just weeks after DeSantis signed the Dozier compensation bill drew harsh criticism from opponents of the death penalty.

“In passing the compensation bill for Dozier survivors, the state of Florida recognized its direct responsibility for the profound and lifelong impact of the 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,” Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Maria DeLiberato told The News Service of Florida.

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.

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. 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 isn’t the only former Dozier student who has received a death sentence, according to research provided by Melanie Kalmanson, an attorney and author of the “Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty” blog.

Other former Dozier students sentenced to death include:

• Craig Wall, 49, who was sentenced to death after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in 2015. Wall, who was 15 when he attended Dozier, remains on Death Row.
• William Sweet, 56, who was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering a 13-year-old girl in 1990. He remains on Death Row.
• Joe Nixon, 63, who was confined at Dozier at age 10, and was sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of a Leon County woman. He remains on Death Row.
• Gregory Mills, 67, who was sentenced to death in 1980, requested records from Dozier during his appeals, suggesting he attended the school. Mills was later resentenced to life in prison.
• Kristopher Sanders, 50, who attended Dozier in his teens and was sentenced to death for a Pasco County murder in 1996. He was resentenced to life in prison and remains in custody.
• Richard Gibson, who was sent to Dozier in 1962, was sentenced to death for crimes that occurred in 1975. His death sentence was later reduced to life in prison, where he died in 2014.

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