The state of Florida executed by lethal injection on Thursday afternoon a death row inmate convicted of killing a college student in 1994 and raping the victim’s older sister while they were camping in a national park.
The convicted man, Loran Cole, 57, was declared dead at 6:15 p.m. (local time) and became the first inmate executed in Florida this year, according to the local newspaper ‘Miami Herald’. The lethal injection took place after the Supreme Court refused to accept an appeal in which lawyers argued that they had to prove whether it would be “painful” because he suffered from Parkinson’s.
According to court records, Cole and a friend, William Paul, befriended the two college students in the Ocala National Forest. The youngest, John Edwards, was beaten, had his throat slit and was left in the woods, while the eldest was tied to a tree and raped.
The NGO Amnesty International (AI) said that the United States carried out 24 executions in 2023, which is six more than the previous year, an increase that is in line with data from the rest of the world.
