In Florida’s first execution of the year, a man found guilty of killing a husband and wife at a secluded farm while the couple’s toddler watched was executed Thursday.
After receiving a fatal injection at Florida State Prison, James Dennis Ford, 64, was declared dead at 6:19 p.m., according to state authorities.
Following a jury trial, Ford was found guilty of killing Gregory Malnory, 25, and his wife Kimberly, 26. The two men were coworkers, according to court documents, and were killed in 1997 while fishing at a sod farm in southwest Charlotte County.
The 22-month-old daughter of the couple was strapped into a seat in the family’s open pickup truck when she saw the murders. Investigators say the girl survived an 18-hour ordeal until workers arrived and discovered her covered in her mother’s blood and bitten by several insects.
Maranda Malnory, the daughter, told Fort Myers television station WBBH lately that she only knows her parents through pictures and other people’s memories and that she had no memory of what had transpired. “I told one of my grandmas the other day you grieve the people you knew,” she continued. “But I grieve what could have been.”
2025 will see the first state execution
In 2025, Ford was the first person executed in Florida. When Governor Ron DeSantis was running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2023, six people were executed; in 2024, only one person was executed. No executions had been approved by the governor in the preceding three years. In January, he signed the death warrant for Ford.
The execution of a guy in Texas who killed his strip club manager and another man and then caused a widespread lockdown of the state prison system was also planned for Thursday night.
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The murders at Malnory
According to court filings, Ford assaulted Gregory Malnory after the group arrived to go fishing. He hit him with a blunt object that resembled an axe, sliced his throat, then shot him in the head with a.22-caliber rifle.
According to officials, Kimberly Malnory was shot with the same firearm after being raped and abused.
At first, Ford suggested that someone else killed the Malnorys by telling police that they were still alive when he left them to go hunting. A court document from the prosecution stated that there was “overwhelming proof that Ford was responsible for the murders and the rape.”
Prosecutors used DNA evidence during Ford’s trial to link him to both killings when the rifle was later discovered in a ditch close to where his truck had ran out of gas. The trial judge accepted the jury’s 11-1 recommendation that the murders be punished by death.
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Court cases
Without comment, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Ford’s last appeal on Wednesday.
Since his sentencing, Ford’s attorneys had made multiple unsuccessful appeals. According to court records, the Florida Supreme Court recently dismissed arguments that he was qualified for execution because of his IQ of roughly 65 at the time of the crimes, placing him in the category of people with intellectual disabilities.
Ford was 36 at the time of the murders, therefore it was “impossible for him to demonstrate that he falls within the ages of exemption,” the court stated, noting that only defendants whose chronological age was under 18 at the time of a crime can be ineligible for the death penalty.
Court documents don’t make it apparent why these murders took place.
Ford’s defense included the claim that he was abused as a child and had an alcohol problem similar to his father’s, consuming around one case of beer and liquor every day. Additionally, he had untreated diabetes, which occasionally caused unpredictable behavior and blackouts.
Ford was also found guilty of child abuse and sexual battery with a firearm during the trial.