JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A crime that haunted Jacksonville for 18 years concluded Wednesday with an ending no one expected.
Moments after a jury voted 10-2 to spare the life of a woman convicted in Jacksonville’s notorious “buried alive” case, the victims' family spoke directly to the defendant.
"Tiffany, I just want to say I forgive you," the victims' niece told Cole. "I truly forgive you."
"We forgive you," echoed the Rev. Jean Clark, who lost her brother Reggie Sumner and his wife Carol in the 2005 crime.
It was a stunning to a conclusion to a crime of almost unparalleled brutality. Tiffany Cole, 41, was previously convicted of the 2005 murder, in which the 61-year-olds Sumners were kidnapped from their Jacksonville home, bound in duct tape, and driven to a remote wood in South Georgia, where they were buried alive.
Cole knew the couple, who were friends with her father and once lived in her neighborhood.
"It was emotional," Clark told First Coast News. "I saw that she was almost in disbelief that we would get up and say 'we forgive you.'"
The couple’s niece Rhonda Planes doesn’t dismiss the horror of what happened. "It was a heinous crime, it was a very heinous crime," she said shortly after the verdict. "But Tiffany -- I just felt the whole time that it was condemning her again. She’s been re-tried over and over."
Clark agreed. "Cause she’s already served how many years? What is death going to bring but more death, whereas when there’s life, there’s hope."
Cole's original 2007 death sentence was thrown out in 2017 after Florida began requiring unanimous jury verdicts in death cases. Cole’s original jury was split 9-3. While Cole’s resentencing was in process, however, the law changed again. Florida juries can now sentence someone to death with a vote of just 8-4.
During closing arguments, attorney Jay Plotkin, the original case prosecutor, told jurors they should hold Cole accountable for the carefully premeditated “horrible acts.” He noted Cole held the flashlight as her three co-defendants dug the “death pit” two days before the murders.
“While she may not have turned a shovel of dirt from the hole where the Summers were left to die, she was certainly an instrument -- and I would submit the catalyst -- of why Reggie and Carol Sumner died. Simply stated, these murders would not have happened but for [Tiffany Cole].”
Plotkin said that she deserved death even though her boyfriend and co-defendant Michael Jackson was the mastermind. “What evidence is there that she was dragged kicking and screaming into the dark night of crime by Michael Jackson?” he asked. “The only people dragged into the night of the crime were the people killed in that hole.”
However, Cole’s attorney Julie Schlax argued she has changed since her arrest and has been an inspiration to other inmates. “Tiffany Cole is not ‘the worst of the worst,’” she said. “I submit how she has lived her life and truly found an ability to overcome those shortcomings that led her to Georgia in the middle of the night.”
She reminded jurors about extensive witness testimony that Cole suffered from low self-esteem, early drug abuse, and had been molested by her father.
“Does it excuse it? Of course not. None of us will ever forget what happened to the Sumners in 2005. And nor should we. Tiffany Cole won't forget either. There will not be a day of her life that she spends behind bars [not] thinking about what occurred in 2005, and what led her to be a part of that. But Tiffany Cole is so much more than that. And she actually has the ability to contribute. We ask you not to judge her solely for her actions of 2005.”
Schlax noted Cole would die in prison regardless, and that a life sentence is a sufficient punishment.
Cole’s codefendants Jackson and Alan Wade were already resentenced. Wade was given a life sentence last year; Jackson was resentenced to death in May. A fourth co-defendant, Bruce Nixon, was sentenced to 45 years in prison for cooperating with investigators.
