Florida Executes Student's Killer

A Florida man convicted of killing a college freshman and raping the murder victim's older sister while the siblings camped in a national forest 30 years ago was executed Thursday. Loran Cole, 57, received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 6:15pm at Florida State Prison, the AP reports, for the 1994 killing of 18-year-old John Edwards. Cole also was serving two life sentences for rape. Edwards was attending Florida State University in Tallahassee. "He was a good, kind soul," a former fraternity brother told USA Today.

The execution was the first in Florida since Michael Zack was put to death last October for the 1996 killing of Ravonne Smith. The US Supreme Court denied Cole's final appeal earlier Thursday. His lawyers had raised several points unsuccessfully in seeking a stay of execution, including the fact that Cole was an inmate at a state-run reform school where he and other boys were beaten and raped. The state has since apologized for the abuse and this year passed a law authorizing reparations for inmates at the now-shuttered reform school. The lawyers also argued Cole shouldn't be executed because he was mentally ill and had brain damage and Parkinson's disease. William Paul also was convicted of first-degree murder in the attack and sentenced to life in prison, per the AP.

(More execution stories.)