A Florida law has resulted in the resentencing of four individuals previously condemned to death for the gruesome 2005 kidnapping, robbing, and murdering a Jacksonville couple .
Reggie and Carol Sumner were living a peaceful life until their sudden disappearance. Days later, their nightmare ending was revealed: they had been brutally kidnapped, robbed, and the medical examiner determined they were buried alive in a shallow grave in Southern Georgia. The medical examiner's report confirmed the unimaginable— they were still breathing when they were buried.
Alan Wade, Michael James Jackson, Tiffany Cole, and Bruce Nixon launched a terrifying attack on the elderly couple in their home. They bound Reggie and Carol in duct tape, stuffed them into the trunk of their car, and drove them across state lines. In a cruel twist, after coercing the couple to reveal their bank account pin number, the four callously buried them alive, leaving the couple to a slow, agonizing death, Law & Crime reported.
Court records stated that “the Sumners were chosen as victims because of their vulnerability and the belief that they had considerable financial resources.”
Michael Jackson and Alan Wade were both convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in the case, but their sentences were overturned in 2017 after a new Florida law requiring unanimous jury verdicts for death penalty cases was passed. In 2022 the two men went on trial to be resentenced.
Jackson and Wade had separate the trials, starting with Alan Wade. Prosecutor Alan Mizrahi argued that Wade’s “evil” acts did, in fact, warrant the death penalty, First Coast News reported.
“Carol and Reggie Sumner are now in a grave, but in July 2005, they were not put in a grave,” Mizrahi said. “They were put in a death chamber. A hole. A pit in Southern Georgia, which was this defendant’s murder weapon.” Wade’s defense instead focused on Wade’s abusive childhood.
“No matter what your decision is, after your decision, Alan Wade will die in prison and will leave in a coffin,” Wade’s defense attorney, Blake Johnson, told jurors. He also noted that his client would not have been eligible for the death penalty if he'd taken part in the crime while still a juvenile. "Why?" he asked rhetorically. "The adolescent brain is different.”
At sentencing, jurors agreed that though Wade’s crimes were “cold, calculated, and premeditated,” they did not fit the standard of being “heinous, atrocious, and cruel,” therefore recommending life in prison over the death penalty, Oxygen reported. That decision was approved by a judge.
In August 2023 co-defendant Tiffany Cole, was also resentenced to life in prison after a jury voted 10-2 to spare her life. That same month, the so called "mastermind" of the crime, Michael Jackson, was resentenced to death.
After testifying against Cole, Jackson, and Wade, Bruce Nixon received two concurrent sentences of 45 years' imprisonment.
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