JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A woman who’s spent the past 15 years on Florida’s death row was in a Jacksonville courtroom Wednesday morning in hopes of getting a life sentence.
Tiffany Cole was convicted along with three co-defendants for the murder of Carol and Reggie Sumner, both 61. The couple was kidnapped from their Englewood home in July 2005, bound with duct taped and driven in the trunk of a car to Georgia, where they were buried alive.
Cole is being resentenced under a 2016 Florida law that began requiring unanimous jury verdicts in death cases. Cole’s jury was split 9-3. A law passed earlier this year reversed that standard, requiring only a vote of 8-4 to impose the death penalty.
The new law is being challenged on a number of fronts, both in the Florida Supreme Court and in numerous motions filed by defense attorneys in pending death cases. That's true in Cole's case as well, but on Wednesday her attorneys filed a novel challenge, claiming that the legislature "acted to target Ms. Cole specifically and with intent that she be punished."
In support of that motion, attorney Patrick Korody cited a social media post by Republican state Rep. Berny Jacques out of Pinellas County. In it, he claims credit for the new death penalty law and retweets a First Coast News story about Cole's resentencing.
"Because of the bill I did with Senator Blaise Ingoglia, this heinous woman will now be resentenced and face the death penalty that she deserves," he wrote. "It’s sad that she was able to escape true justice under the previous law."
In their motion, Cole's attorneys argue Jacques' statement amounts to "a bill of attainder ... a law that legislatively determines guilt and inflicts punishment upon an identifiable individual without provision of the protections of a judicial trial."
Prosecutors have not yet filed a response to the motion.
The case brings back many of the original players, including the judge and the prosecution team. Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi told jurors Cole deserves the ultimate punishment, noting she was the only one of the four defendants who knew the victims. Cole was the Sumner’s former neighbor and she once bought a car from the couple.
Although Cole wasn’t present when the couple was actually buried alive, she was there when the hole was being dug days before the murder. “She held the flashlight and made sure the hole was deep enough and wide enough,” Mizrahi said. "It was built and designed in the middle of the night, on that hot summer night in the woods of southern Georgia, to dispose of two human beings that this defendant had a personal relationship with."
Cole also bought the duct tape used to bind and blind the couple, and later celebrated the successful crime with champagne purchased with the Sumner’s money.
“Tiffany Cole was the face of the operation. She was by far the highest functioning member of this group,” Mizrahi told jurors. She was also the oldest. “She was almost like the mom of this operation.”
The resentencing process resembles a trial with testimony and evidence, since jurors must learn the facts of the case, but they do not determine guilt or innocence. Cole’s 2007 conviction stands; all jurors must decide is whether she receives life in prison or death.
Cole’s defense team chose not to give an opening statement Wednesday, electing to wait until the state finishes presenting its case to do so.
Two of Cole’s codefendants have already been resentenced. Alan Wade was sentenced to life in prison; Michael Jackson, the acknowledged mastermind of the crime, was re-sentenced to death. A fourth defendant, Bruce Nixon, was originally given a life sentence after cooperating with prosecutors.
The case is expected to continue through the week.