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Thread: Florida Capital Punishment News

  1. #131
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Florida Supreme Court revamps rules for death penalty appeals

    The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday approved a series of changes aimed at improving the death-penalty appeals process, including revising requirements for attorneys handling cases.

    Justices last year formed a subcommittee to look at the appeals system, a move that came as the Legislature targeted delays in carrying out the death penalty by passing a bill dubbed the “Timely Justice Act.”

    The Supreme Court largely approved a series of rule changes that were proposed by the subcommittee and that deal with what are known as “post-conviction” appeals in death-penalty cases. The subcommittee took input from groups such as judges, prosecutors, public defenders and the governor’s office.

    As an example of the revisions, justices approved additional requirements for lead attorneys in post-conviction appeals. Those attorneys, in part, will be required to have at least three years of experience in post-conviction litigation and also meet criteria for experience in handling capital cases.

    Justices Charles Canady and Ricky Polston dissented on two issues, including a rule change that will prevent defendants from representing themselves in post-conviction proceedings.

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/ne...th-pena/ngYsZ/
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  2. #132
    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    Just so it's handy, here is the current Florida execution protocol. It's dated September 9, 2013.

  3. #133
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    Ok. The Timely Justice Act is passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Scott. Where are the executions that were supposed to occur? The only change I have seen is the Florida Supreme Court sending a list to the Governor on which inmates have exhausted state and federal appeals.

  4. #134
    Senior Member CnCP Legend FFM's Avatar
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    My guess is the election in November is hindering death warrants, and Governor Scott doesn't want to do anything that he or his staff believes may divert voters to Crist. From what I've read and seen, the election remains a tossup, and is currently the most closely watched gubernatorial election in the country right now. If there is a mistake on either side, then they could lose votes to their competition.

    If you support Scott (like I would if I lived in Florida), then I suggest you tell all your friends and family to vote for him, seeing that Crist is not motivated regarding the death penalty, especially when it comes to signing death warrants.

  5. #135
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    Do Floridians have the stomach for coming ‘Timely Justice’ execution spree?

    By Opinion Staff

    The list of Florida inmates living on death row is 393 names long.

    It’s about to grow shorter. Much shorter.

    Florida’s Supreme Court this summer found constitutional the state’s Timely Justice Act, signed by Gov. Rick Scott in 2013.

    Soon, the state could be poised for a killing season unlike any other. Do Floridians have the stomach for this? Or even the crude capability?

    The act gives a governor 30 days to sign a death warrant once the Clerk of the Court certifies that appeals have been exhausted. After that, the state has 180 days to carry out the execution.

    A point of debate has been whether the governor can manipulate this schedule by requiring the cases go through the formality of a clemency hearing before the clock starts ticking. That’s the Scott administration’s position, and the executions are stalled. Neither the governor’s press office, the Office of Executive Clemency or the Department of Corrections responded to questions about the source of the delay.

    But make no mistake, the executions are coming.

    As of July 7, more than 130 inmates were certified by the clerk as ready to execute, meaning Florida’s Department of Corrections could conceivably be putting to death an average of five people a week for 26 weeks, an unprecedented state death conveyor belt.

    Those on the list include Duane Owen, 53, who was first sentenced to death in Palm Beach County in 1986. Thirty years ago, he brutally killed and raped two strangers inside homes, a Boca Raton mother and a teenage girl baby sitting in Delray Beach. A confession, bloody footprints, a fingerprint and semen all linked Owen to the killings. He had his appeals, many of them, and they are exhausted.

    But not all 130 cases are so black and white. A 2006 study of Florida’s death penalty system by the American Bar Association found the state was exceptional, in a bad way. It was the only state in the nation to allow a simple majority of jurors to recommend capital punishment rather than a unanimous vote. And Florida led the nation in exonerations, the ABA panel found. For every three prisoners executed, one was found to be wrongfully convicted.

    Beyond the issue of errors, there is the practical matter of how to do the killing.

    The state allows two methods of execution, both with disturbing histories.

    There is the electric chair, which has failed gruesomely on multiple occasions.

    Then there is lethal injection. Florida’s 11-step protocol calls first for a sedative known by the brand name Versed to be administered at 50 times the typical therapeutic dose. Next, the executioner delivers about 12 times the therapeutic dose of vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, stopping breathing. Finally, the executioner delivers a lethal dose of potassium chloride, stopping the heart.

    “The process will not involve unnecessary lingering or the unnecessary or wanton infliction of pain and suffering,” wrote Corrections Secretary Michael Crews in September.

    It’s been suggested that Florida’s protocol is so over-the-top that it’s unlikely the state will ever see the disturbing botched lethal injections that have recently occurred in Arizona, Oklahoma and Ohio.

    But if the pressure is on to clear death row quickly, during a time of drug shortages, will the protocols change? Will mistakes be made?

    Floridians need to understand that they are on the cusp of something historic, something that will cause much of the civilized world to recoil.

    Are you comfortable with the impending execution spree? Or do you think Florida should slow down and re-think how, why and whether it should kill its killers?

    http://opinionzone.blog.palmbeachpos...ecution-spree/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
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    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
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  6. #136
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    The law was poorly written and gives any Governor leeway on when to order the execution if at all. It should have specified time limits for a clemency determination once the Florida Supreme Court certifies that the inmate has exhausted state and federal appeals. The Governor cannot sign a death warrant until clemency is considered and denied. Otherwise, the courts would step in.

    This law failed to acknowledge the massive number of inmates who had not been advised by the Governor's counsel to apply for clemency to reduce the sentence to life imprisonment.

  7. #137
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    So, couldn't the GOP-dominated legislature easily fix the problem by passing a law setting time limits for a clemency determination?

  8. #138
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    Yes, it could. I am going to email Matt Gaetz, a leading sponsor of the bill. For once in the last 25 years, I finally agree with something death row attorney Martin McClain said. He commented that the TJA was all for "show." For what intended purpose, I have no idea.

  9. #139
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Have you gotten an answer back from Gaetz yet?

  10. #140
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    The view from the US county where death penalty invoked the most, per capita

    Jacksonville, the site of early European settlements on the northeast Florida coast, is a fine enough place – excellent sun, great crab shacks, sand dollar-strewn beaches, and the classic Floridian melting pot of cultures and accents.

    But for those who do something really bad here in Duval County, this otherwise hospitable place is likely to turn on them, quickly and efficiently.

    Per capita, the people of Duval sentence more of their neighbors to death than any other place in America. The equivalent of 1 out of approximately every 14,000 people who live in this urban county of 850,000 people has been condemned to die by lethal injection.

    While much of the United States has gradually backed off the ultimate sanction, Duval County jurors have sentenced 14 people to death in the past five years for a litany of crimes, and 60 since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

    Death penalty critics tend to focus on wild-eyed prosecutors, vengeful judges, and bumbling defense attorneys as the problem with a national death row that runs 3,000 people deep. But interviews in and around Jacksonville indicate that Duval’s propensity for punishment by death comes in big part from the will of the people. Such views of residents haven’t been shaken by some 148 death row exonerations in the US since 1973 – 25 in Florida alone – including five in the US so far in 2014.

    “If they done it, they done it, and it’s time to go,” says Buck Gergely, a bait dealer, in a typical response.

    In many ways, Duval County is an outlier, part of the approximately 2 percent of US counties that are responsible for sentencing 56 percent of the nation’s death row inmates. Nevertheless, the attitudes here offer a window into some of the arguments that shape the debate over the death penalty – a sanction that a majority of Americans still support. The capital punishment debate has continued to be a US flash point this year, in particular as the country saw several botched executions in which convicts appeared to suffer.

    In the South, deep-running honor codes, even an eye-for-an-eye culture, along with a penchant for violence are certainly part of the equation, especially here in Duval County, experts argue. “The sense of using violence and mob rule and the death penalty was familiar in what we think of as the frontier, and I think that the frontier never went away in the South,” says William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South in Chapel Hill, N.C., and author of “The Storied South.” “Tall talk, colorful language, and violence never disappeared.”

    Amy Wood, a cultural historian at Illinois State University in Normal, adds a moral dimension to the discussion.

    “Why Southerners have retained a culture of vengeance within the criminal-justice system is based in part on the idea of the criminal paying a debt to society, but also [of us affirming] our own moral values by how severely we punish that criminal,” she says.

    To be sure, America writ large is thinking twice about the death penalty. This year so far has seen the least number of executions since 1994, and other Southern states such as Virginia and North Carolina are backing off capital punishment.

    Some states with large death rows, most notably California and Pennsylvania, are carrying out executions only rarely. And juries in other states that have turned to the death penalty more often, including Texas, Virginia, and Missouri, are sentencing fewer convicts to death.

    “When it comes down to it, the fact that we can’t figure out the right drugs to [administer], in essence that we can’t tie the noose right, that’s what’s driving public opinion more than the big questions about guilt or innocence,” says Seth Kotch, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who is writing a book about the death penalty in the South.

    But if political elites or enlightened juries are marginalizing the death penalty in some places, it’s a different story in states like Florida and Alabama, where populism and democracy play a key role. Neither state requires a unanimous jury decision to impose death, and both allow judges in some cases to transform life-without-parole sentences to death sentences. Also, both states elect judges and prosecutors, and Florida even elects public defenders, which means counties like Duval usually have a small cadre of individuals who directly reflect the will of the people in how they handle capital sentencing.

    Jacksonville has become a unique place where residents “want the state, in the name of the people, to come in and avenge particular crimes,” says Ms. Wood, who edited the chapter on violence in “The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.”

    From rough-and-tumble fishing villages to the east to the startling poverty of its Westside, Jacksonville is a lively Southern jewel where you might spot a cowboy in a laundromat, fish-plant workers communing with pelicans, or a lumber mill on Beaver Street. Beneath its sun-bleached veneer, however, lies a vexing truth: The corner of the state with the greatest proclivity for vengeance is also its most violent.

    Instead of asking why so many death convictions, most local folks say, the real question is, why is the violent crime rate so high? Indeed, Duval leads other Florida metropolitan areas such as Miami-Dade and Tampa in nearly every violence metric, from murder to rape, domestic violence to gun crimes. While other jurisdictions have seen declines in violent crime, Duval County’s rate hasn’t budged.

    “There’s deviance here,” posits A.J. Johnson, outside his home in Mayport, a nearly 500-year-old fishing community that was the site of a mass murder in 2003.

    County residents cite other factors as contributing to the high rate of death sentences: the influence of military culture from nearby Defense Department installations, elected prosecutors, and Jacksonville’s proximity to the Florida State Prison in Raiford, where death row inmates wait.

    To many critics, today’s death penalty-prone corners are the continuation of a Southern system of justice by lynching, originally set up largely to punish blacks. At the very least, studies show a propensity by juries to punish black defendants more harshly in capital cases, especially if they killed a white person.

    For many critics, the fact that death rows, including Florida’s, are disproportionately made up of black convicts affirms that propensity, although supporters argue that death row demographics are largely commensurate with broader violent crime statistics.

    “In some of these counties where race plays a certain role, especially in white flight areas, there’s fear that crime is coming from poorer people or minorities. It’s a back-against-the-wall sort of feeling that we need to have the death penalty to maintain law and order,” says Richard Dieter, executive director of the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

    Florida Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda is known for his courtroom prosecution of George Zimmerman, but he also has a 31-year record of prosecuting capital cases in the Fourth Judicial Circuit, which includes Duval County. Prosecutors in the county, he says, know that a large majority of residents don’t have a problem with the high capital conviction rate.

    “We live in a conservative county ... that values personal responsibility, which means that people here also value personal accountability,” he says.

    Donna Cargill is among those who support the death penalty wholeheartedly. “They need to kill them,” says the biker bar waitress, pointing to news of shootings and killings in the city’s impoverished and largely African-American Westside.

    But Ms. Cargill later reveals that her son has twice been sent to Florida State Prison for committing crimes against children. (She claims he is innocent.) Until the US Supreme Court ruled otherwise, even Floridians who had not been convicted of killing someone could face death for particularly heinous cases of molestation.

    Mr. Johnson says his estranged daughter, a gang member in Newport News, Va., has twice been accused, but not convicted, of murder. He hopes she will avoid a third time, especially in Duval County.

    “The punishment should fit the crime, but it’s a fine line,” he muses.

    Although he supports the death penalty in general, he says the courts put too much focus on the details of certain murders, and not enough on trying to understand why those crimes happened.

    Mr. Kotch sees use of the death penalty as part of longstanding patterns.

    “We know that the best predictor of execution is previous execution, which suggests that a courthouse or a county can get into a habit of doing things, and those habitual behaviors are informed by cultural cues about crime and punishment,” he says.

    Still, support for the death penalty in a place like Duval presents a bit of a paradox, because such regions in the South tend to politically oppose centralized power. “The fact that the death penalty is the most profound way a government can intervene in the life of a citizen would seem to cut against sort of [antigovernment] politics in the South,” Kotch says. “Yet it somehow manages to line up.”

    Yet things are changing somewhat.

    While Texas still executes more people than any other state, the number of death row convictions has gone down, with fewer such convictions this year than executions – part of a five-year trend. The election of the first black district attorney in Dallas, some suggest, has led to a dwindling number of convictions there. And mostly because of demographic and procedural changes, Virginia and North Carolina have de facto moratoriums on executions.

    Even Duval County has seen a slight dip in the number of death row convictions in the past few years.

    https://news.yahoo.com/view-us-count...171300175.html

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