RAIFORD, Fla. – James D. Ford, who was convicted of murdering a young couple in 1999 in southwest Florida while their toddler looked on, was executed by lethal injection Thursday and pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m.
The execution at the Florida State Prison went off “without incident,” according to a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, Ted Veerman. Around 25 people witnessed the execution and Ford had no final statement, according to The Associated Press.
Receiving the lethal cocktail of drugs, Ford’s chest heaved. A staffer shook him and yelled “Ford! Ford!” to see if he was conscious, the AP said. There was no response.
“You don’t have justice as long as he’s alive,” said Deidre Parkinson, Kim Malnory’s stepmother. “We have justice and relief now.”
Ford’s last meal was steak, mac and cheese, fried okra and pumpkin pie, WBBH Gulf Coast NBC reported. He met with several family members before he was put to death.
More than 70 opponents to the death penalty, including nearly 50 people from Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Daytona Beach, gathered in a field across from Death Row an hour before Ford’s execution.
In the minutes before 6 p.m., more than 50 people struck a bell with a hammer. Friar Phil Egitto, the pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes, said exonerated prisoners told him the bell was audible from Death Row.
Ford was convicted of killing his coworker, Greg Malnory, 25, and the man’s wife, Kim Malnory, 26, at the farm where the pair worked in 1997.
The Malnorys were beaten and shot outside the truck where their daughter, Maranda, then almost 2 years old, sat in a car seat. Maranda survived after spending the night covered in her mother’s blood and insect bites. She still lives in southwest Florida.
Maranda Malnory, now 29, was not present at the execution, but she wrote a statement to be read on her behalf.
“As this chapter of my life is closed I just want to say that while I never got to know my parents they were with me during this whole process,” the statement said. “While I know this will never bring me back to my mom and dad, I will never get the chance to meet them. It is giving me peace of mind.”
“With everything going on these two have been on my mind a lot lately,” she wrote on social media last week alongside a picture of her parents’ graves. “The last month has been the hardest, no one ever prepares you for it.”
In Ford’s initial trial, his friends and family said he was an alcoholic and his lawyers said he was so drunk he didn’t have control of himself at the time of the murders.
A jury voted 11-1 to recommend a death sentence for each of the murders. Judge Cynthia Ellis agreed, sentencing Ford to death in June 1999.
Ford’s lawyers submitted appeals to state and federal courts arguing he shouldn’t be executed because he had a mental age of 14 when he committed the murders. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Ford’s petition for a stay of execution Wednesday evening.
There are currently 276 people on Death Row in Florida. One person was executed in 2024.
This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at blunardini@ufl.edu. You can donate to support our students here.
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