 As a result, through the efforts of Joseph L. Lewis, Coe was arrested and charged on February 6, 1956 with practicing medicine without a license, a felony in the state of Florida.A Florida Justice of the Peace dismissed the case on grounds that Florida exempts divine healing from the law.Later that year Coe was diagnosed with bulbar polio, and died a few weeks later at Dallas' Parkland Hospital on December 17, 1956.