TALLAHASSEE, Florida – Beginning at 9 a.m. EST at the Florida State Capitol, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) will gather to deliver petitions to Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Board of Executive Clemency, urging them to stop the execution of Loran Cole, scheduled for Thursday, August 29, at 6 p.m.
FADP is proud to present these signatures in coordination with Catholic Mobilizing Network, Witness to Innocence, and Death Penalty Action.
The petitions are signed by thousands of individuals from Florida and around the world, calling for the commutation of Mr. Cole’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The signers are committed to defending the dignity of life, creating true justice, and abolishing the death penalty.
In June of this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a victims’ compensation bill for those who attended the state-run Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in North Florida. This compensation bill followed years of investigation into the horrific abuse and brutal deaths at the Dozier School. A federal investigation led to the school’s closure in 2011. The Dozier survivors are collectively known as the “White House Boys,” derived from the white concrete building where boys were routinely beaten and raped by school workers.
One of those White House Boys is Loran Cole, who was housed at Dozier School for Boys in 1984, at the age of 17.
Maria DeLiberato, Executive Director of FADP: “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.”
As Pope Francis penned in the preface to lay Catholic minister “Brother” Dale Recinalla’s forthcoming book about his experiences with those on Florida’s death row: “The death penalty is in no way a solution to the violence that can strike innocent people. Capital executions, far from bringing justice, fuel a sense of revenge that becomes a dangerous poison for the body of our civil societies. States should focus on allowing prisoners the opportunity to truly change their lives, rather than investing money and resources in their execution, as if they were human beings no longer worthy of living and to be disposed of.”
If Loran Cole’s execution proceeds, he will be the 106th person executed by the State of Florida and the 9th executed under Governor Ron DeSantis.
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FADP is a Florida-based, state-wide organization of individuals and groups working together to end the death penalty in Florida. Our network includes dozens of state and local groups and thousands of individual Floridians, including murder victims’ family members and other survivors of violent crime, law enforcement professionals, families of the incarcerated, and death row exonerees.