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Thread: Tiffany Ann Cole - Florida

  1. #11
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    Are they still going after the DP for her?

  2. #12
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    Jury selection begins for men sent to death row for kidnapping, robbing, murdering local couple

    Reggie and Carol Sumner were found in a shallow grave

    By Ashley Harding
    News4JAX

    JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jury selection begins Monday for two of the men sent to death row for kidnapping, robbing, and murdering a local couple.

    Reggie and Carol Sumner were reported missing from their home in 2005 and were found in a shallow grave in Charlton County, Georgia, where medical examiners said they were buried alive.

    Death sentences for Alan Wade and Michael Jackson were thrown out in 2017, their convictions haven’t changed— but their punishment may.

    17 years after the two were convicted and sentenced to death for murdering Carol and Reggie Sumner, prosecutors contend the men along with two other people kidnapped the couple from their St. Nicholas home, and forced them to make cash withdrawals from ATMs, then buried them alive in Charlton County, Georgia.

    Shovels and crime scene photos were shown at trial, other evidence were photos of the defendants posing with money and drinking champagne in the back of a limo.

    Tiffany Cole was also sentenced to death for her role in the crime making her one of a handful of women on death row in Florida. At her sentencing hearing in 2015 Cole begged for mercy. Her death sentence was also thrown out.

    Wade’s online court documents show the defense team filing motions as recently as last Friday. Including some asking for certain pieces of evidence to be thrown out.

    Jury selection is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. on Monday.

    https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/...-local-couple/

  3. #13
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Man convicted of murdering Jacksonville couple by burying them alive receives life sentence

    Ultimately, Jurors found the murders of Reggie and Carol Sumner "cold, calculated and premeditated" but not "heinous, atrocious and cruel."

    By Anne Schndler
    First Coast News

    JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The man convicted of murdering a Jacksonville couple by burying them alive will spend the rest of his life in prison.

    The unanimous decision was delivered by a jury Thursday afternoon after three and a half hours of deliberations.

    Alan Wade was being resentenced for the 2005 murders of Carol and Reggie Sumner, both 61 years old.

    The jury weighed seven aggravating factors against 54 mitigating factors. The verdict had to be unanimous for Wade to receive the death penalty. Ultimately, Jurors found the murders of Reggie and Carol Sumner "cold, calculated and premeditated" but not "heinous, atrocious and cruel."

    Wade's original death penalty was thrown out because the verdict was not unanimous. Because his original conviction stands, the jury was only tasked with deciding what his punishment should be.

    Jurors heard closing arguments Thursday morning.

    Prosecutor Alan Mizrahi told them, “death is the appropriate sentence.”

    “Time has not dulled anything to do with the evil of these acts,” he said. “The shovels still have the dirt. Time does not heal all wounds

    Although there was considerable testimony about Wade and his codefendants digging “a grave” to bury the couple, Mizrahi said that was an inappropriate term. “Carol and Reggie Sumner are now in a grave, but in July 2005 they were not put in a grave. They were put in a death chamber. A hole. A pit in Southern Georgia, which was this defendant's murder weapon.”

    He reminded jurors how the crime terrorized the two 61-year-olds, who married late in life. When placed, bound with duct tape, in the trunk of a car, and driven to a remote site, they loosed their restraints and hugged each other.

    “These two lovers, who finally found each other, were aware that the exact same thing that was happening to them, was happening to the person they loved most in the world.”

    And he belittled the mitigation presented by the defense, including evidence of childhood sexual abuse and trauma, as “biased and paid for.”

    “While defense paid for experts saying he is afraid of the dark…He is putting shovel after shovel of dirt over two human beings. Under cover of darkness he buried two disabled people in the dark forever.”

    Wade's attorney said he would not attempt to excuse or minimize the crime.

    “No matter what your decision is after your decision Alan Wade will die in prison and will leave in a coffin," Blake Johnson said. He noted that when Wade committed the crime in 2005, he was “just 47 days past his 18th birthday".

    “Forty-seven days prior, Alan Wade wouldn’t be eligible for the death penalty. Why? … The adolescent brain is different.”

    Johnson told jurors that no matter how awful the crime, “The state is not asking you to execute the person he was 17 years ago. The person you will render a verdict on is … the person who sits with us in the court room with us and breathes our air.”

    He continued, “A life sentence is a perfectly acceptable punishment for a crime of this magnitude, and none of you are ever required to put someone to death. You are not required… to kill Alan Wade."

    He continued, “Alan Wade is not a monster. He is a human being. He cries. He cares. He deeply regrets what happened, and if he could take it back, he would. You are being asked to make a godlike decision of whether someone lives or dies, but without godlike wisdom. You are being asked to execute another human being. …If you have the slightest thought that in 10 years you may regret killing Alan Wade, then that is reason for sentencing him to life. You don’t have to kill Alan Wade...He’s a human being. He’s salvageable.”

    https://www.firstcoastnews.com/artic...e-9e56263f4dd4
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #14
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Woman on death row headed back to court in ‘buried alive’ case

    By Anne Schindler
    First Coast News

    Tiffany Cole was 23 when she plotted with three male co-defendants to rob and kill an elderly couple. She was 26 when she was sentenced to death. Now 41, Cole is back in Jacksonville ahead of her scheduled resentencing next week.

    Cole is one of four defendants in the 2005 case, in which Reggie and Carol Sumner were kidnapped from their Jacksonville home, bound with duct tape and driven to rural Georgia where they were buried alive.

    Cole had been the couple’s neighbor at one time, and went to their house in July 2005 with friends Alan Wade, Bruce Nixon, and her boyfriend Michael Jackson on the pretext of using their phone.

    Nixon cooperated with prosecutors and received a life sentence for the crime. Jackson, Wade, and Cole were all sentenced to death. However, their sentences were thrown out in 2017 after a new law was passed requiring unanimous jury verdicts in death cases.

    The law changed back again this year. Florida juries can now sentence someone to death with a vote of just 8-4. So while Cole is being resentenced because of the 2017 rules, she will be resentenced under existing ones. Cole’s original jury was split 9-3.

    Cole's codefendants were already resentenced. Alan Wade was given a life sentence last year; Michael Jackson was resentenced to death in May.

    After Jackson’s resentencing, State Attorney Melissa Nelson said the ultimate punishment was warranted.

    “This remains one of the most shocking and evil crimes our community has ever suffered — cold, calculated, premeditated, heinous, atrocious, cruel," she said. "Despite the passage of time, law enforcement and the prosecution, led by Alan Mizrahi, have remained steadfast in their commitment to this case and to the friends and family of Reggie and Carol Sumner."

    Cole was booked back into the Duval County Jail Friday ahead of next week’s proceedings.

    Jury selection begins Monday and could take two days.

    https://www.firstcoastnews.com/artic...b-11e6bbedafc6
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  5. #15
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    So can she go back to death row? Because I was thinking, it should be a slam dunk to get at least 8 jurors to vote for death.
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #16
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Family makes emotional case to spare Florida death row inmate Tiffany Cole

    Relatives describe a chaotic childhood and insist the woman convicted of burying a Jacksonville couple alive has changed

    By Anne Schindler
    First Coast News

    JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Family members testified tearfully on Tiffany Cole’s behalf on the second day of her resentencing hearing Thursday, saying she is no longer the person who committed the heinous crime that led to her death sentence.

    Cole is one of just three women on Florida’s death row for her role in the 2005 murder of Carol and Reggie Sumner. The Jacksonville couple was kidnapped in July 2005 and buried alive in a pit in south Georgia. Cole was sentenced to death along with two codefendants. A third man was given a 45-year prison sentence after cooperating with prosecutors.

    Cole’s death sentence was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court in 2017 because it was not a unanimous verdict. A newly-comprised court reversed that decision, and state law now allows juries to sentence someone to death on a vote of just 8 to 4.

    Today, Cole’s defense team began presenting emotional testimony today from her family members who described a turbulent childhood in which Cole was given adult-sized responsibilities at a tender age, and mistreated by her mother.

    Her aunt, Nancy Cole, recalled Cole was punished for wetting the bed, forced to do her own laundry in kindergarten, and made to sit on the toilet for hours as punishment. She recalled coming to the house one night and finding Tiffany asleep on the toilet, sucking her thumb.

    “I love her. I wish she was not in this situation. I wish things were different,” Cole testified via a video recording.

    A cousin, Roesanna Cricks, said they both discovered religious faith in later life, adding she wished they could have had that structure and inspiration when they were young. She said Cole suffered anxiety over a birthmark under her eye, and described the girl’s relationship with her mother as fraught and tense.

    Cole ran away repeatedly when she was 15, according to testimony from several family members, and moved out for good at 16, after which she was involved with drugs and exploitative relationships with men.

    Cole also wept during testimony, wiping her eyes with her hands and tissues as family members described her upbringing.

    Prosecutor Alan Mizrahi challenged that portrait, noting she always had a place to stay, a supportive extended family, and was never physically abused.

    Cole’s attorneys have asked if she will be allowed to “allocute” – or speak directly to the jury – to apologize for her actions. However, senior Circuit Judge Michael Wetherby said if she takes the stand, she must submit to cross-examination by prosecutors. That would likely involve extensive questioning about a crime that Wetherby, who presided over the original 2007 trial, said was likely the worst death he could envision.

    The resentencing proceeding is expected to last until Wednesday.

    https://www.firstcoastnews.com/artic...0-2cab108cdc00
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  7. #17
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Jury vote was 10-2 for life.

    Article adds nothing new.

    https://www.jacksonville.com/story/n...e/70663608007/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  8. #18
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    10-2 for life only because she’s a woman. That’s what the article should read.
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