STARKE, Fla. — A Florida man convicted of murdering a husband and wife during a fishing trip at a remote farm while the couple’s toddler looked on is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday in the state’s first execution this year.
The execution of 64-year-old James Dennis Ford is set for 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison under a death warrant signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in January. It is the first execution scheduled in Florida this year after one execution in the state in 2024 and six in 2023.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Ford’s final appeal Wednesday without comment.
Ford was convicted by a jury of murdering Gregory Malnory, 25, and 26-year-old Kimberly Malnory during a fishing outing in 1997 at a remote sod farm in southwest Florida. Ford and Gregory Malnory were coworkers at the Charlotte County farm, court records show.
The couple’s 22-month-old daughter witnessed the killings while strapped in a seat in the family’s open pickup truck. She survived an 18-hour ordeal before the crime scene was discovered by workers. Investigators said she was found covered in her mother’s blood and suffering from numerous mosquito and other insect bites.
Court documents say Ford attacked Gregory Malnory after the group arrived to go fishing, shooting him in the head with a .22-caliber rifle, beating him with an axe-like blunt instrument and finally slitting his throat. Kimberly Malnory was beaten, raped and then shot with the same rifle, authorities say.
Ford initially told investigators that the Malnorys were alive when he left them to go hunting, suggesting someone else killed them. Prosecutors said in a court filing that there was “overwhelming proof that Ford was responsible for the murders and the rape.”
The rifle was found later in a ditch near where Ford’s truck had run out of gas and prosecutors presented DNA evidence at his trial connecting him to both slayings. The jury voted 11-1 to recommend the death penalty in the killings, to which the trial judge agreed.
Ford’s lawyers have filed numerous appeals since his sentence was imposed, none successful. Most recently the Florida Supreme Court rejected claims that his IQ of about 65 at the time of the murders put him in an intellectually disabled category with a mental age then of about 14 — therefore ineligible for execution, court documents show.
The court noted that only defendants whose chronological age was under 18 at the time of a crime can be ineligible for the death penalty “and because Ford was 36 at the time of the murders, it is impossible for him to demonstrate that he falls within the ages of exemption.”
It’s not clear from court records why these killings happened. Part of Ford’s defense was that he suffered from abuse as a child and became an alcoholic like his father, drinking about a case of beer a day along with liquor. He also suffered from untreated diabetes, sometimes leading to blackouts and erratic behavior.
Besides the death penalty, Ford was also convicted of sexual battery with a firearm and child abuse.
If carried out as scheduled, Ford’s execution would be the first in Florida in 2025. One person was put to death in 2024, down from six in 2023, when DeSantis was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. During the previous three years, the governor didn’t sign off on any executions.
The Death Penalty Information Center said Florida uses a three-drug cocktail for its lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart.