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Thread: Florida Capital Punishment News

  1. #11
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    Fla. House passes courts overhaul legislation

    In a far-reaching exercise of power by one branch of government over another, the Republican-controlled Florida House of Representatives passed a sweeping overhaul of the state's courts system on Friday.

    House members passed the main legislation (HJR 7111) by a party-line vote of 79-38 and approved the bill (HB 7199) that implements it, 78-37. Related bills also passed easily, all backed by Speaker Dean Cannon.

    The legislation, which requires changing the state's constitution, expands the Supreme Court from seven to 10 members and splits them evenly into separate divisions for criminal and civil appeals.

    Its Republican backers said the changes will allow for judicial specialization to move cases faster and will promote transparency in the selection of judges and justices.

    It also requires that the three more senior justices — Barbara Pariente, R. Fred Lewis and Peggy A. Quince — go to the criminal bench to use their expertise on death-penalty appeals. They happen to be appointees of the late Lawton Chiles, a Democratic governor.

    Democrats have lambasted that part of the bill as "court packing," saying Republican Gov. Rick Scott will get to fill the civil bench with his picks. They fear GOP-friendly jurists will sway important business and social-policy cases ending up in the civil division, including any political redistricting challenges.

    Republicans said criticism of the plan, which now goes to the Senate, was "hyperbole."

    Minority Leader Ron Saunders, a Florida Keys Democrat, asked if the legislature would be pushing the high-court changes had Democrat Alex Sink won the last governor's race, instead of Scott, also a Tea Party favorite.

    "I think not," he said. "Stop using the constitution as a political football."

    But state Rep. Clay Ford, a Gulf Breeze Republican and a lawyer, said lawmakers heard "a real need for reform" of the courts as the measures wound through committees.

    "Failure to act now would be a grave disservice to our citizens," he said. "We need to fix the system."

    The court's own statistics seemingly disprove that sentiment, however, showing the number of death penalty cases on the Supreme Court's docket is decreasing and that they're getting resolved faster. The number of all cases pending has decreased for six years straight.

    The changes require constitutional revisions that ultimately have to be approved by 60 percent of voters on the November 2012 ballot.

    That's why state Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Palatka, said it's up to the people of Florida to enact the change. He suggested they will.

    "Our Supreme Court of Florida has failed us over and over," he said. "This legislature will send a message that should be sent and make a decision that places the court and its future in their hands."

    State Rep. Rich Corcoran, R-New Port Richey, characterized the Supreme Court split in particular as an act of vengeance for murder victims and their families.

    He mentioned the frustration of seeing defendants sentenced to death years ago still sitting on Death Row, and talked about victims' loved ones waiting for justice only to die before the murderer does.

    "Undeniably, without question, I am voting for this bill to stick it to every death-row inmate in the state of Florida," Corcoran said.

    State Rep. Geri Thompson, D-Orlando, who is married to senior appellate judge Emerson R. Thompson Jr., said she feared the high court might give rubber-stamp approval for the governor's programs.

    "It's difficult to give wise counsel to a person who wants echoes," Thompson said. "We were told the governor would only appoint people who think like him. That's echoes, not wise counsel."

    State Rep. Evan Jenne, D-Dania Beach, said his father — former Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne — taught him that courts work best when they are methodical and deliberate.

    "God forbid you ever have to sit at a defendant's table, you would want just that," he said.

    He also reminded the chamber of the Supreme Court's Latin motto, which translates as "soon enough if correct."

    "It doesn't mean a rush to judgment," Jenne said.

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/st...n-1403713.html

  2. #12
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    Some 40 death row inmates awaiting death warrant from governor, Democrat claims

    Speaker Dean Cannon's proposal to create separate criminal and civil divisions of the Florida Supreme Court passed the House 79-38 on April 15, 2011, but not before Democrats and Republicans argued over an alleged purpose of the court expansion -- the handling of death penalty cases.

    Cannon wants to expand the Supreme Court from seven to 10 members, and then separate them into two five-member panels. One panel, including the three most senior judges (appointed by late Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles) would serve on the criminal side, while the four justices appointed by Republicans would serve on the civil division. Gov. Rick Scott would appoint nominees to fill the other three slots.

    Republicans argue the expansion is needed to help settle death penalty cases more expeditiously -- 393 people currently are waiting on Florida's death row.

    "Unreasonable delays plague state post-conviction review, and there is little Florida's current Supreme Court can do to improve or streamline the process," Cannon, R-Winter Park, wrote in an April 14 op-ed article in USA Today. (We previously checked -- and rated True -- Cannon's claim that more people die on death row of natural causes than are executed.)

    But Democrats say the appeals process isn't necessarily what's slowing down death penalty cases.

    In remarks on the House floor, Rep. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, said the governor's office is as much, if not more, to blame.

    "The proponents argue that the Florida Supreme Court should be split because it will allow them to expeditiously resolve capital cases that have languished in the court," Thompson said. "The facts are the Florida Supreme Court has a capital caseload that is lower this year than last. The facts show that approximately 40 persons on death row have had all of their appellate review completed and await only the governor's signature on a death warrant to end the case.

    "Perhaps the proponents should pass legislation requiring a governor to sign a death warrant within 60 to 90 days after all appellate review has been denied, if their concern is 'disposing' of death penalty cases."

    Are 40 people, more than 10 percent of the current case back-log, waiting on the governor to sign a death warrant?

    After checking with several agencies, including the Supreme Court and the Department of Corrections, we were directed to the state Commission on Capital Cases, a body created in 1997 by the Legislature to provide oversight on the administering of death penalty cases. Legislators and judges serve as members of the commission, which also has a full-time staff. (Interestingly, another bill passed by the House would eliminate the commission.)

    The commission keeps a list of what it calls warrant-eligible inmates, said commission executive director Roger Maas. He explained to us that the list covers inmates who have exhausted both their state and federal appeals.

    That makes the next step toward execution the signing of a death warrant and setting of an execution date, Maas said.

    A note: For the most part, the governor has discretion over issuing death warrants. In other words, he picks who and when. In fact, the governor can sign a death warrant for any prisoner sentenced to death, though those warrants likely will be stayed until the state and federal appeals process is complete. And the signing of a death warrant can and often does trigger potential additional appeals -- though if no new information is presented, the appeals are more delay tactics. (The Supreme Court can issue a death warrant, based on an application from the attorney general's office, if the governor has committed an "unjustified failure" to issue a warrant).

    Maas provided us with his warrant-eligible inmate list as of April 7, which you can see for yourself here.

    According to the commission, 47 inmates currently have exhausted their appeals and the next step is for the governor to sign a death warrant.

    The list includes Gary Alvord, for instance, who has been on Florida's death row since April 1974 and is awaiting a death warrant. Alvord escaped a Michigan mental hospital and wound up in Tampa, where he killed three women. Alvord, who turned 64 on Jan. 10, has been awaiting execution for 37 years.

    But many experts say he will never be executed. Alvord has a history of mental illness and has been declared mentally incompetent by several courts.

    Since 1979, 69 people have been executed -- a rate of a little over two per year.

    Craig Waters, a spokesman with the Florida Supreme Court, said there is no limit to how many death warrants a governor can sign. But governors have signed just a handful a year despite the backlog of inmates awaiting execution.

    Gov. Charlie Crist signed six death warrants in his four years in office. Gov. Jeb Bush signed 24 death warrants in the preceding eight years. Of those 30 inmates, 26 were executed. Of the other four, two inmates had their death sentences vacated, one died while awaiting execution, and one inmate's execution was stayed by Bush.

    Scott has yet to sign a death warrant since taking office.

    During arguments against a proposal to expand and split the state Supreme Court, Thompson said "approximately 40 persons on death row have had all of their appellate review completed and await only the governor's signature on a death warrant to end the case." According to the Commission on Capital Cases, the number sits at 47. We rate this claim True.

    http://www.politifact.com/florida/st...ath-warrant-g/

  3. #13
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    I know Crist received one email with a list of "ready to go" inmates. We should probably copy and paste the updated list to Gov. Scott.

  4. #14
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    Good idea!

    "Perhaps the proponents should pass legislation requiring a governor to sign a death warrant within 60 to 90 days after all appellate review has been denied, if their concern is 'disposing' of death penalty cases."

    That's a fine idea as well.

  5. #15
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    If only all states would model their death penalty appeals process after Virgina....

  6. #16
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    Controversial Plan to Split Florida’s Supreme Court Moves Forward

    We recently noted the controversy in Florida over a move by legislators to split the state’s high court in two, with civil and criminal branches.

    The proposal received a vote of approval yesterday in the Florida Senate, the Tampa Tribune reports.

    The court-splitting plan has attracted the ire of Democrats, because it would involve Florida’s Republican governor appointing three new justices to the civil supreme court — to replace three Democrats who would move to the new criminal court.

    Adding further intrigue the civil court is due to rule on upcoming legislative plans to draw new voting districts.

    Members of Florida’s Senate Budget Committee voted in favor of the court-splitting plan yesterday. The yes voted was designed try to curry favor with the plan’s chief sponsor, House Speaker Dean Cannon, who will play a key role in the state’s lagging budget talks, the Tribune reports.

    The proposed change to the Florida high court, however, would require amending the state constitution, which would need to be approved by 60 percent of voters.

    “To see this blatant attack on the balance of power . . . boggles my mind,” Florida resident Stephen Sarnoff testified at a Florida hearing on the measure, according to the Tribune.

    Anyone who “has learned the Constitution, has learned why we have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers,” he said. “We’re going to blow all that away.”

    Champions of the court-splitting idea say that the state needs a new supreme criminal court so that death penalty appeals can be heard more expeditiously.

    http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/04/26/...ogle_news_blog

  7. #17
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    Fla. Senate rejects major overhaul of state courts

    The Florida Senate on Monday threw out most of a proposed court-system overhaul that came from the House, removing the biggest change - a division of the state Supreme Court into separate divisions for civil and criminal appeals.

    A late-filed amendment by Majority Whip David Simmons, an Altamonte Springs Republican, overhauled the overhaul. It also took out a provision that gave the governor power to appoint the chief justice. Now, the chief is selected by the other justices.

    But the bill passed by senators would require Senate confirmation of new Supreme Court justices. It also asserts authority over the court system's rulemaking process and would open misconduct investigations of judges to public view.

    After much talk about the Founding Fathers, separation of powers, and the Federalist Papers, senators approved the changed bill (HJR 7111) by a vote of 28-11 and sent it back to the House.

    Katherine Betta, a spokeswoman for Speaker Dean Cannon, who had pushed the more ambitious plan, said the House would accept the Senate's redo.

    "It does not appear that the Senate will go as far as the House in terms of bold reform, but Speaker Cannon is proud of the debate that was initiated," she said.

    The changes still require constitutional revisions that have to be approved by 60 percent of voters on the November 2012 ballot.

    "To put something like that on the ballot is a waste of time and money," said former Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero, who had opposed the House plan. "But it doesn't have the grave consequence to judicial independence that the court-packing plan did."

    Critics had called the split-court part of the plan "court packing," saying Republican Gov. Rick Scott would get to fill the new civil bench with his picks.

    They said GOP-friendly jurists would sway important business and social-policy cases ending up in the civil division, including any political redistricting challenges.

    "The (Senate) vote kept getting postponed," added Cantero, now in private practice in Miami. "That means they didn't have enough to pass it."

    Indeed, several senators - including Republicans - questioned the House plan last week, some giving close to a hazing to sponsor Ellyn Bogdanoff, a Fort Lauderdale Republican.

    By Monday, Senate Democrats said they still had concerns about intruding on the workings of another branch of government.

    "The amendment is great compared to the bill, but we're going down a slippery slope," said Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale. "We're going into the judicial lanes. I don't see the urgency, but let this be the end of the road."

    But Sen. Thad Altman, a Rockledge Republican, said the tempered changes will make the courts more accessible and more responsive.

    "They've slipped away from the people," he said. "I don't think it's an encroachment."

    Sen. Ronda Storms, a Valrico Republican, said she was simply happy to avoid a battle over the judiciary.

    "I will rest more easily when I face my constituents and say, 'it all worked out,' " she said.

    House Republicans had argued that their changes allowed for judicial specialization to move cases faster, especially death penalty appeals.

    The court's own statistics, however, showed that the number of death penalty cases on the Supreme Court's docket is decreasing and that they're getting resolved faster. Moreover, the number of all cases pending has gone down for six years straight.

    Cannon's proposal included splitting the court, increasing the number of Supreme Court justices from seven to 10 and moving the three more senior justices - Barbara Pariente, R. Fred Lewis and Peggy A. Quince - to the criminal bench to use their expertise on death-penalty appeals.

    Pariente and Lewis are appointees of the late Lawton Chiles, a Democratic governor. Quince was appointed by Chiles and then-Gov.-elect Jeb Bush.

    In another cancelled provision, Cannon would have moved the two-division Supreme Court to the 1st District Court of Appeal courthouse in southern Tallahassee, displacing that court.

    Lawmakers and others have criticized the almost $49 million spent to build the district court's lavish courthouse in Tallahassee, dubbed the "Taj Mahal." It was never decided where the appeals court would have been relocated.

    http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/0...#ixzz1LHtBt8ms

  8. #18
    I think it would be a good idea if the citizens of the State of Florida and the open public who support the death penalty get more involved and encourage Governor Rick Scott to carry out these death sentences. According to several articles, some 40 death row inmates are elegible for a death warant, but after my own thorough research on the Commission on Capital Cases website, I'd put the number more around 53-54 inmates. I'm not sure if anybody has actually seen that 'death warrant elegible list', but I have. Inmates like Ian Lightbourne, Norman Parker, Bryan Jennings, James Hunter and many others aren't even on the list but have exhausted all their legal options and nothing would stop their executions from being carried out Should the Governor sign a warrant for their executions.

    Best thing to do is contact the Governor's office and Attorney General and encourage them to stop denying justice to the victims' families and have these sentences carried out. The reason these inmates languish decades upon decades on death row is because of the Governor's failure to execute these warrants, NOT because the appeals process is to slow.

  9. #19
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    Death penalty panel is gone

    The Florida Commission on Capital Cases is no more.

    Gov. Rick Scott signed into law, without comment, a bill passed in haste on the final night of the legislative session. It eliminates the only clearinghouse for death-penalty case information, the status of court cases of the 397 people on Florida's death row - including 16 from Southwest Florida - and archival cases on the 69 people Florida has put to death since 1979.

    The elimination of the commission also saves $400,000 and gets rid of five positions.

    The bill, pushed by House Speaker Dean Cannon, provides for a small part of the commission's duties to be shifted elsewhere, but leaves much else up in the air.

    "The Legislature agonized over cutting many worthy programs, and we understand that, in this economy, cuts have to be made," said Roger Maas, executive director of the commission since its 1997 inception. He and his staff will be out of a job at end of the month.

    Lobbying to keep intact the commission and even broaden its work to encompass the full breadth of its original intent failed.

    Legal advocates, including former Florida Supreme Court Justice Raul Cantero, a former 5th District Court of Appeal judge from Brevard County, and various lawyers with death-penalty agendas called to keep alive the commission, to no avail.

    "I didn't necessarily shed a tear when they were shut down," said Todd Doss, a Lake City attorney who litigates death-penalty appeals and is a board member of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

    Doss said the comprehensive status reports the commission maintained on state and federal legal appeals were convenient, but not essential.

    "It doesn't affect what I do," he said.

    However, one result could be a paradox, at odds with Cannon's stated desire for death-penalty cases to be tried more efficiently. Cannon said earlier this year the Supreme Court spends a disproportionate amount of time on death-penalty cases and noted in recent years, more death row inmates have died of natural causes than by lethal injection.

    The end of the commission, in part responsible for continuing legal education required of lawyers and judges in capital cases, could very well give rise to legal challenges that delay executions even further.

    "That's the irony in the whole thing," said state Rep. Jim Waldman, D-Coconut Creek, chairman of the now-defunct commission. "It's the opposite of what (Cannon) wants to effectuate by getting rid of this. This is the one commission specifically devoted to dealing with death-penalty issues and the expeditious administration of justice. By doing away with this commission you're saying you're not really concerned with" due process.

    Another commission board member, state Sen. Ronda Storms, a Bradenton Republican, railed against the bill on the floor of the Senate late on the last day of the session. Her concern was as much with the process that brought it to the floor as it was with defense of the commission. The conforming bill came out of House-Senate budget negotiations. The proposal was never heard in a Senate committee and popped up in only a single House appropriations committee.

    Defense attorneys may use the action to their clients' advantage.

    "This will in the very least give rise to a claim. Any kind of logical nexus to the issue will be leveraged by defense counsel," said Mark Schlakman, senior program director for the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University and chairman of the board of the Innocence Project of Florida. "It's fraught with problems."

    But Doss said the commission wasn't fulfilling its mission, anyway. He said he put together and ran continuing legal education events on behalf of the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers after the commission failed to do so.

    Charles Harris, a retired judge at the 5th District Court of Appeal and a member of the commission's board since last year, hoped the commission would become more active and lead a push to consider the efficacy of the death penalty.

    "I think the death penalty needs to be reviewed, it needs to be improved," Harris said. "The whole thing is that the public thinks the death penalty is sure and swift. It's not."

    "We've got two death sentences" available now, Harris said, referring to execution and life without possibility of release. "It's just that one is a lot more expensive than the other."

    Cantero, in a 2005 Supreme Court opinion, urged the Legislature to consider requiring unanimous jury votes to impose the death penalty. That's not happened. The Republican-dominated Legislature has refused reviews of the state's death penalty, including those sought by Cantero, commission board members and an American Bar Association study that found inequities in multiple stages of capital cases.

    "If you cut off the head of this statutory scheme then you have no forum to facilitate efforts to improve the administrative justice across the three branches," Schlakman said. "If you stand mute, you're playing into this tacit validation of what this commission perhaps not is, but what it was intended to be.

    "Its elimination could complicate the governor's task in this area going forward."

    The commission compiled a list of those death-row inmates who have exhausted their appeals and are eligible for a death warrant signed by the governor. Such a list was delivered to Scott during his first week in office earlier this year naming 47 ready for execution.

    http://www.news-press.com/article/20...yssey=nav|head

  10. #20
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    Russ Lemmon: Will Scott, Bondi offer more than lip service on death sentences?

    By Russ Lemmon

    [edited]


    • When Florida voters elected Rick Scott as governor and Pam Bondi as attorney general, I was optimistic there wouldn't be a business-as-usual approach for inmates on death row.

    During her endorsement interview with Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, Bondi promised she would be "a very strong advocate" for executions. She cautioned, though, that it's ultimately up to the governor.

    Scott, who came from the private sector, had a very effective campaign slogan in "Let's get to work." Now that he's in Tallahassee, I'm hopeful the slogan applies not only to the state's economy but also the carrying out of death sentences.

    Apparently, reader Rick Luke is similarly optimistic things will change on Scott's watch.

    Last month, he sent an email to the governor and asked where he stood on the carrying out of death sentences. He made references to David Gore and Thomas Wyatt, two inmates on death row with ties to Indian River County.

    He received a reply from Warren Davis, who works in the Office of Citizen Services.

    "Governor Scott supports the death penalty as an appropriate form of punishment for those who commit the most heinous crimes," Davis wrote. "The Governor will faithfully discharge his responsibility to sign death warrants for those offenders whose cases have been thoroughly reviewed by the courts."

    That's encouraging, isn't it?

    I asked Luke if he had any kind of connection to the Gore or Wyatt cases. (Gore is on death row for the 1983 murder of Lynn Elliott. Wyatt is there for the 1988 murders of three Domino's Pizza employees.)

    He said he had no personal connection.

    "I just hate seeing these guys get the death sentence for committing horrible murders and sitting there for decades," he said. "A sentence should be carried out in a timely period once their court appearances have been exhausted."

    He said he had never written a governor before, and he did so this time because Scott "seems so different" than his predecessors.

    "Twenty years is enough time (to be on death row)," Bondi said last fall when asked about Gore. "I do believe the process needs to be expedited."

    Why is that?

    "These families have got to have some finality," she said.

    Indeed.

    So do longtime residents of Indian River County.

    http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/jun/...er=yahoo_feeds

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