Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) urges Florida's legislators to recognize that the death penalty is bad public policy on economic, moral, and social grounds. FADP calls for a "time-out!" on executions until legislative reforms to Florida's death penalty and criminal justice statutes can be made in order to ensure a fair and accurate legal system. Recent polls show that 66% of Floridians, when asked, support the idea of a "time-out" on executions.

Conservative Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan declared such a "time-out!" on executions after recognizing that his state had executed 12, but wrongly convicted, exonerated and released 13 citizens of that state. Florida has released 24 prisoners from its death row, so far. Governor Ryan appointed a commission to study the death penalty system in Illinois, and after two years that commission released 85 recommendations for reform of the Illinois system in order to assure that no innocent person would ever be put to death in that state. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty has made available a comparison of those 85 recommendations to current Florida statutes. See the comparison by clicking here. FADP urges Florida legislators to consider and implement as many of these recommendations as possible, as soon as possible.

In his recent speech during which Governor Ryan emptied Illinois death row, he details his four year journey of going from being an ignorant and blind supporter of the death penalty to being faced with his responsibility as a leader to deal with the realities of our flawed criminal justice system. Click here to read Governor Ryan's commutation speech.

The Constitution Project, a bi-partisan commission that includes Timothy McVeigh's prosecutor, Beth Wilkinson and former FBI Director William Sessions, has released a report making 18 suggestions for reform of the death penalty system. Click here to see the text of that report, entitled "Mandatory Justice: 18 Reforms to the Death Penalty."