Florida apologized to Victor Jones for the abuse he endured at reform school. Now the state wants him executed.

TALLAHASSEE — Less than three months ago, Victor Jones was among more than 900 men who received apologies from Florida officials and checks for $21,000 as reparations for the horrific abuse they endured as children at state-run reform schools.

On Sept. 30, Jones is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection for the 1990 murders of a couple in Miami-Dade County. He would be the third former student at the notorious reform schools to be executed in little more than a year.

Jones’ attorneys, along with other advocates, are arguing in court that the 64-year-old Death Row inmate should be spared execution, in part, because of the “life-altering trauma” resulting from his four stints as a teenager at the now-shuttered Okeechobee School in South Florida.

Beatings, rapes, solitary confinement and other types of physical and mental torture by staff at the school and at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna were so egregious that Florida lawmakers last year steered $20 million to a compensation program for survivors of the institutions.

Men who attended the schools between 1940 and 1975 and “were subjected to mental, physical or sexual abuse perpetrated by school personnel” — including Jones — were eligible for the compensation. Jones was among 926 applicants who were approved for checks in the amount of $21,253.98, which Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office began distributing in late June.

“Florida executing survivors of the schools — especially those who the state has legislatively recognized as victims, like Mr. Jones — is not justice. It is hypocrisy. Executing someone like Mr. Jones’ blatantly contradicts and undermines the state’s recognition of the horrors that occurred at the schools,” Melanie Kalmanson, an attorney and author of the “Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty” blog, wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Tuesday at the Florida Supreme Court.

Groups that signed onto the brief, which focused on the traumatic effect of Jones’ time at the juvenile institution, include the Florida Public Defender Association, the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and other prisoner-advocacy organizations. Troy Rafferty, an attorney who worked closely with reform-school victims and helped shepherd the compensation legislation, also joined the brief.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Jones’ death warrant on Aug. 29, setting off a flurry of court filings in advance of the scheduled execution.

In court documents, Jones’ lawyers pointed to the impact of his time at Okeechobee, saying he “was brutally abused as a teenager by agents of the state of Florida.”

The state’s recent acknowledgment of the abuse and neglect, as evidenced in the compensation program and a Jan. 6 letter from the attorney general’s office saying Jones was eligible for the payments, amount to newly discovered evidence that warrants a fresh court review, Jones’ lawyers urged.

A Miami-Dade County circuit judge on Friday rejected similar arguments.

The recognition that Jones was eligible for the compensation program “does not make the abuse newly discovered,” Judge Lody Jean wrote in an order denying a request to vacate Jones’ death sentence and put his execution on hold.

“Defendant was placed at Okeechobee nearly 50 years ago and would have known of any mistreatment at the time of trial and all prior postconviction litigation,” Jean wrote.

Siding with lawyers for the state, Jean also rejected Jones’ request for procedural reasons.

But in a brief filed Tuesday at the Supreme Court, Jones’ lawyers continued to argue that the Jan. 6 letter “is new evidence” that is “directly related to Jones and material to his mitigation case and sentence of death.”

“The circuit court, in an unnecessarily truncated litigation process, summarily denied all of Jones’s claims and public records requests. In so doing the circuit court failed to conduct the requisite analysis, misapprehended the law and made factual determinations on disputed facts without allowing Jones to present evidence,” the lawyers argued.

Jurors at Jones’ trial in the 1990s were never told about the horrors he endured and witnessed at the reform school — which should have been considered a mitigating factor when weighing his guilt or innocence and would likely have resulted in a life sentence, Jones’ lawyers contend.

Two inmates who were put to death within the past 13 months — Michael Bell, who was executed on July 25, and Loran Cole, who was executed on Aug. 29, 2024 — unsuccessfully tried to use their time at the Dozier school to get a fresh look at their death sentences after DeSantis signed death warrants.

But Jones’ lawyers argue that his case is different because of the Jan. 6 letter acknowledging his eligibility for the compensation program.

“Here, the evidence Jones seeks to introduce is new, is directly related to him and is powerful — it is evidence that the state of Florida admits Jones was a victim of abuse perpetrated by the state of Florida,” the lawyers argued in the brief filed Tuesday at the Supreme Court.

According to court records, Jones was beaten while confined at the Okeechobee school as a “colored juvenile” and “witnessed frequent gang-rapes of other vulnerable children.” To “avoid being gang-raped himself,” Jones had to fight other boys and wound up in solitary confinement.

The “mitigation evidence,” including the “acknowledgment of severe childhood abuse at the hands of the state” and other factors, “is substantial and of the type the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized as relevant, mitigating and warranting a new penalty phase proceeding,” Jones’ lawyers told justices in Tuesday’s brief.

Jones was sentenced to death for murdering 66-year-old Matilda Nestor and 67-year-old Jacob Nestor at their business in December 1990, according to court documents.

The move to execute Jones months after he received compensation for his treatment at the reform school “marks one of the lowest points in Florida’s death penalty history,” Maria DeLiberato, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told The News Service of Florida. Jones’ should be resentenced to life in prison without parole, she suggested.

“That accomplishes the goal of punishing him for his conduct, and also recognizing the state’s role in causing that conduct,” she said.

At least 50 men who spent time at the Dozier or Okeechobee schools have been sentenced to death, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project published this summer.

At least two other Death Row inmates would have been eligible for the reform-school compensation. One of the men — Frank Lee Smith — died on Death Row in 2000 and was exonerated based on DNA evidence a year after his death, Kalmanson’s brief said.

Mitigation specialist Elizabeth Vartkesian, an attorney and researcher who co-founded the nonprofit group Advancing Real Change, called the state’s actions contradictory.

“We’re willing to give money to say, ‘sorry,’ but why aren’t we willing to let him live? Money isn’t the thing that this man needs. This man needed a space of safety,” Vartkesian, whose group joined the friend-of-the-court brief, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “He needed it as a boy and he needs it as a man. We didn’t give it to him then. Why aren’t we giving it to him now?”

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This article appears in Sept. 11-17 2025.