High court rejects appeals from four death row inmates
TALLAHASSEE -- The state Supreme Court rejected appeals from four death row inmates Thursday, including one from Charlotte County.
Daniel Conahan, 49, was condemned for the strangulation murder of 21-year-old Richard Montgomery, a homeless man who posed for a sexual photo session in northern Charlotte County on Jan. 27, 1997. Conahan is suspected in the deaths of four other men found naked in the woods of northern Charlotte County in the mid-1990s. Those cases remain under investigation.
Ian Lightbourne, 43, was sentenced to death for the murder of Nancy O'Farrell, an Ocala woman who was raped and fatally shot in her Ocala home on Jan. 16, 1981.
Charles Anderson, 48, was sentenced to death for the murder of his stepdaughter, Keinya Smith, also on Jan. 16 but in 1994, in Broward County. Smith died of a broken neck caused when her stepfather ran over her.
Thursday's unsigned opinion in the Lightbourne case was unanimous, including the upholding of his trial judge's decision to reject a recantation by a jail house witness as not credible.
The unsigned opinion in the Anderson appeal, which like the others was based on various issues, was fractured, with only three justices fully supporting the opinion and the others concurring in result only to some degree.
The other death row inmate who lost his appeal Thursday was Loran Cole, condemned for the February 1994 murder of John Edwards, a freshman at Florida State University who was camping in Ocala National Forest with his sister when Cole slashed Edwards throat and raped Edwards' sister.