Florida's Newspapers Support A Moratorium!

Listed Below Are the Editorial Comments of the Following Florida Newspapers:

   Orlando Sentinel: 08/19/01: Revisit death penalty
   Miami Herald: 11/16/01
   Tallahassee Democrat: 01/11/02
   St. Petersburg Times: 01/15/02
   Gainesville Sun Editorial: 01/20/02: 'Another Day' Coming
   Palm Beach Post: 02/08/02: Use delay in executions to change state's rules
   Orlando Sentinel: 02/10/02: The suspension of the death penalty gives Florida a chance to regroup.
   The Miami Herald: February 13, 2002: Death Penalty Roulette: Serious Flaws Demand State Scrutiny
   Daytona Beach News-Journal: 02/14/02: Capital Punishment: Florida's grave injustice
   St. Petersburg Times: 02/16/02: "Florida Roulette"
   Palm Beach Post: 02/18/02: Death cases, penalty rife with serious error
   St. Petersburg Times: 04/19/02: Shameful death penalty mistakes:
   Palm Beach Post: 04/20/02: More reason for Florida to reform the death penalty:
   St. Petersburg Times: 05/19/02: Pondering punishment:

   St. Petersburg Times: 06/25/02: Community's Conscience

Revisit death penalty

August 19, 2001

Our position: Gov. Bush should create a panel on the death penalty and delay executions.

Capital punishment historically has played a small, but significant, role in Florida's criminal-justice system, a role this newspaper has supported for years.

Fairness and the integrity of that system, however, demand a new look.

Florida leads the nation in the number of people -- 21 -- who have been removed from death row in the past two decades because the defendants were later found innocent or because of serious flaws in the way cases were handled. Those flaws included misconduct by police and prosecutors and inept defense lawyers. Illinois is a distant second with 13 people removed from its troubled death row.

In fact, during the past 25 years, Florida has executed 51 people. Is there any chance that an innocent person was among them? Considering the number of people removed from death row, that question should disturb any reasonable Floridian.

Re-examining capital punishment does not necessarily mean that the death penalty would be -- or should be -- abolished. But even death-penalty advocates should support a thorough examination and public discussion of capital punishment.

Floridians deserve to know the facts. If capital punishment truly is a fair and effective component of the justice system, then it should have no difficulty standing up to scrutiny.

Gov. Jeb Bush, who has the grim responsibility to sign death warrants for executions, is the person who should set in motion an investigation. He should convene a special bipartisan commission to scrutinize capital punishment, and he should delay any further executions until that investigation is completed.

Mr. Bush, who supports capital punishment, knows there may be problems with Florida's death penalty. During the last legislative session, he wisely signed a measure prohibiting the execution of people who are mentally retarded. He also has voiced support for allowing condemned inmates to request DNA screening in an effort to prove their innocence.

Urgency is critical. On next year's ballot, Floridians will be asked to make the death penalty part of the state constitution. But its approval would pervert the objective of the constitution. That document is intended as a framework for Florida's government, not a substitute for state laws. This newspaper has consistently opposed cluttering the constitution with unnecessary amendments. The death penalty, already firmly established in state law, would be one of those.

Whether it should remain even as state law is what a Bush-appointed commission could determine. The governor would be following the example of Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a fellow Republican, who launched a special commission to examine capital punishment and put a moratorium on executions. Mr. Ryan became alarmed by the number of people removed from his state's death row because of serious problems in the investigation and prosecution of capital cases.

A death-penalty commission in Florida could include respected thinkers from both sides of the death-penalty issue. Suspending executions until the commission has completed its work seems reasonable because its conclusions might have an effect on the cases of condemned convicts. A brief delay would not significantly affect Florida's death row. There are 373 convicts on death row. Only one has been executed so far this year. Usually Florida executes an average of two people each year.

Convening the commission this fall would give the members time to explore the subject and prepare a report for next year's legislative session.

The commission should look at a variety of issues, but the major ones include why Florida has had so many people removed from death row; what procedures police use to interrogate suspects and get confessions; the quality of legal representation provided to indigent defendants being tried for a capital crime; and, finally, whether capital punishment deters others from committing crimes. If so, that last question alone is a very strong argument for keeping it.

New questions about fairness and flaws in the judicial system demand that Florida take a renewed, sober look at the death penalty.

Copyright (c) 2001, Orlando Sentinel

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Miami Herald

Published: Thursday, November 16, 2000

Section: Editorial Page: 6B

DEATH PENALTY By Herald Staff

Their crimes may be horrible but our society should look skeptically at any policy allowing criminals with the mental capacity of young children to be put to death for their crimes.

That is one of many troubling issues with the death penalty that should cause states and the federal government to halt executions until they establish guidelines that eliminate the arbitrary application of such serious punishment. In the news this month are two such issues - the pending execution of a mentally disabled defendant and the execution of a foreigner whose embassy wasn't told of his arrest.

Today Texas may execute a man with the mental age of 7 or less for a rape and murder. On Florida's Death Row is Roger Lee Cherry, mental age of 8, who beat to death an elderly woman in DeLand. Both men were subjected to unusually cruel abuse by their parents; even so, neither should ever be free to threaten others. But should not the ultimate penalty be used only for the evil?

Both the Florida and Texas legislatures have failed to ban the execution of the retarded as have 12 other states, in part because of objections by their governors, Jeb and George W. Bush. Jeb Bush's office says that he will not sign death warrants for the ``severely'' retarded; no one was available Wednesday to define that adjective. Of greater concern is an opinion by the state Supreme Court finding no ``physical'' evidence of Cherry's retardation. As a motion for a new hearing notes, there is no such test.

Texas also was the scene of the execution of a Mexican last week over the objections of his nation and the European Union. States often fail to notify embassies when their citizens are arrested despite a 1963 convention and possible repercussions for Americans abroad. When the arrest leads to execution, a practice reviled in most advanced nations, the United States is subjected to intense criticism.

That's deserved criticism. Even defenders of the death penalty cannot point to evidence that it is applied fairly and uniformly and only to the most vile of human beings.

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Editorial: Halt Florida executions over sentencing issue

The Palm Beach Post Monday, January 21, 2002

If Florida will not listen to reason on the death penalty, the state at least should pause long enough to listen to the Supreme Court.

Ten days ago, the justices agreed to hear an Arizona case on how that state decides between execution and life without parole. The argument is over the fact that Arizona, like Florida, allows only the judge to give death sentences, which, as in Florida, are based on a list of "aggravating" factors -- the crime was "especially heinous" -- and "mitigating" factors -- such as the killer's mental capacity.

Florida and eight other states give the judges full power. In the federal courts and the 29 other states that allow capital punishment, juries decide. The justices could rule that Florida's system is unconstitutional on the grounds that juries should determine the severity of a crime. There's no telling how many of the 372 inmates on Florida's Death Row such a ruling could affect. With three executions pending, Gov. Bush should delay them and impose a moratorium until the high court decides.

Florida's system is especially inconsistent. Though a 12-person jury must rule unanimously for conviction, recommending the death penalty requires just a 7-5 simple majority. Even Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer, who strongly supports capital punishment, believes 12-0 should be the standard to recommend execution. The jurors don't have to specify which of the 11 aggravating and seven mitigating factors they relied on for their decision. Though judges make the final decision, it is extremely rare for them to disregard the jury's sentiment.

Despite efforts by Gov. Bush to speed up executions, momentum is running the other way. Illinois Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium in February 2000 after several publicized exonerations. With 22, Florida leads the nation in the number of Death Row inmates set free. Just this month, Juan Melendez went free after nearly 18 years on Death Row.

And as University of Florida Professor Michael Radelet noted in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times, Florida courts have been handing down fewer and fewer death sentences. Last year, there were only 14, the lowest since 1976, when the Supreme Court allowed states to resume capital punishment. One reason is that since 1994, juries in Florida have been able to give killers life without parole. Between July 1996 and June 2001, Palm Beach County prosecutors sought capital punishment 16 times and got three death sentences.

Several cities in Florida have approved resolutions in support of a moratorium. Tallahassee became the latest this month. Today, a march in support of a moratorium will begin from Union Correctional Institution, which with neighboring Florida State Prison houses Death Row. The marchers -- among whom will be four men freed from Death Row -- will travel 143 miles, from the prison north of Gainesville to the Governor's Mansion, arriving in Tallahassee on Jan. 31. Organizers want the governor to accept what they hope will be 20,000 petitions. He has not responded.

In January 2000, before Gov. Bush and the Legislature's clumsy, unsuccessful attempt to shorten death-penalty appeals, The Post calculated that Florida spends $51 million a year to keep capital punishment. The cost was based on time spent by prosecutors, public defenders and judges. It includes the salaries of lawyers for the state who handle only Death Row appeals.

Legislators disputed the calculation but could not refute it.

The case for a moratorium was clear before the high court intervened. Now, it's closed.

http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/epaper/editions/today/
opinion_c3a495ba2640110e0003.html

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Tallahassee Democrat

Editorial: Yes to justice

The Tallahassee Democrat, published January 11, 2002

One doesn't have to be opposed to the death penalty to care about its fairness. Take Charles Billings, one of three Tallahassee city commissioners who endorsed a resolution Wednesday seeking a moratorium on executions in Florida and an in-depth review of the system. Dr. Billings, a Florida State political science professor, said he had no problem sending killers like Ted Bundy to their deaths. But, as he noted, too many questions persist. Since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to re-implement the death penalty more than two decades ago, Florida, with 22, leads the nation in the number of condemned convicts freed from Death Row because of legal error or new evidence. Tallahassee's support for the moratorium is symbolic, but it is important. Sixty-one municipalities across America already had endorsed similar resolutions, but Tallahassee is the first Florida city to do so. Buoyed by a newspaper poll indicating a moratorium is backed by 62 percent of Floridians both for and against capital punishment, supporters are planning major political pushes across the state and in the capital in the coming months. As Dr. Billings said, the question is simply one of justice.

http://web.tallahasseedemocrat.com/content/tallahassee/
2002/01/11/opinion/0111.edit.htm

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A Times Editorial

Hold off on executions

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that could affect the way Florida imposes the death penalty. The state should delay any executions until that case is decided.

© St. Petersburg Times published January 15, 2002

By Feb. 7, Florida plans three more executions. Gov. Jeb Bush should postpone them and schedule no more until the U.S. Supreme Court resolves the latest and most serious challenge to how this state and eight others impose the death sentence. If the governor doesn't act, the state's own Supreme Court should.

Make no mistake: The situation is serious. A case that the U.S. Supreme Court accepted Friday for argument in April has the potential to overturn nearly 800 death sentences, depending on how the justices decide it. Nearly half of them are in Florida. Another 128 are from Arizona, source of the case the court will hear, and the rest are from Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Montana and Nebraska.

In each state, a judge rather than a jury decides whether there are aggravating factors, such as that the murder was particularly "heinous," in favor a death sentence and whether there are "mitigating" factors, such as a defendant's youth or mental incapacity, that weigh in favor of mercy. In five of the states, judges alone impose sentence. Though Florida, Alabama and Indiana call on the jury to recommend between death or life in prison without parole, the jurors' vote is not binding on the judge. Moreover, Florida jurors are not required to specify what they find the factors to be.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the life-or-death discretion of a judge in Walton vs. Arizona 12 years ago. But two years ago, it ruled 5-4 that New Jersey had violated the constitutional right to due process by allowing a judge to increase the sentence for an ordinary crime upon deciding that the motive made it a hate crime. Though Justice John Paul Stevens' majority opinion in Apprendi vs. New Jersey contended that the new precedent didn't apply to death cases like Walton, Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for herself and three other dissenting justices that the distinction was "baffling."

"If a state can remove from the jury a factual determination that makes the difference between life and death, as Walton holds that it can," O'Connor argued, "it is inconceivable why a state cannot do the same with respect to a factual determination that results in only a 10-year increase in the maximum sentence to which a defendant is exposed."

O'Connor's reasoning was sufficiently vexing to Justice Clarence Thomas, the apparent swing vote in favor of Stevens' opinion, that he wrote separately to say that the death penalty issue "is a question for another day." Thus, only four of the nine justices went on record as saying that Apprendi did not implicitly reverse Walton.

That other day has come, and with it the possibility that Florida's procedure may soon be found unconstitutional. As the ruling is expected before the court recesses for the summer, Florida would appear utterly barbaric in refusing to postpone the executions of Amos Lee King, Robert Trease and Linroy Bottoson.

In Bottoson's case, there are also dramatic arguments in favor of a new sentencing hearing on the questions of his reported mental retardation and schizophrenia. The judge who sentenced him to death 21 years ago heard little of these issues, having refused a defense request to appoint a second lawyer for the penalty phase of the trial. Bottoson's court-appointed lawyer was a novice, a member of the Bar only 26 months, who was too inexperienced to be lead counsel let alone sole counsel in a capital case under the standards the Florida Supreme Court applies today.

Moreover, Bush has pledged not to execute anyone who is retarded and signed into law legislation forbidding the death penalty for anyone who is. Though the legislation was written to exclude people already on death row, the distinction is very probably unconstitutional. Bottoson would merit a stay of execution on that point alone.

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Sunday, January 20, 2002
Sun Editorial: 'Another day' coming

When Roberto Melendez was released earlier this month after spending 17 years on death row for a crime he apparently did not commit, capital punishment foes called on Gov. Jeb Bush to declare a moratorium on executions in Florida pending a review of the fairness of the state's death statutes.

Melendez, after all, is one of 24 inmates to be freed in Florida because later review cast doubt upon their guilt. The state's track record on executions is such that Florida has uncovered about one "mistake" for every two persons its executed. That hardly inspires confidence in the infallibility of Florida's death machinery.

Gov. Bush ignored calls for a moratorium, displaying a blind faith in the death penalty that a fellow Republican governor, George Ryan, of Illinois, does not share. Ryan has already declared a moratorium in his state precisely because of faulty convictions like Melendez'.

Now comes yet another incentive for Bush to at least temporarily disconnect the death machinery. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would review an Arizona death case that could have, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, "colossal" implications for Florida and eight other death penalty states. Depending on how the court resolves Ring vs. Arizona, the death sentences of 385 inmates on Florida's death row could be placed in doubt.

Florida and Arizona are two of just nine states that charge judges, not juries, with determining whether sufficient "aggravating" factors exist to justify the death penalty in capital cases. Indeed, in Florida, juries play no role at all in deciding whether or not a killer, once convicted, will die. Most death penalty states, and the federal government, leave it up to juries to determine whether enough aggravating factors - whether, for instance, a murder is deemed to be particularly cruel or heinous - exist to justify condemnation.

This is not simply a legal technicality. In an earlier case from New Jersey, the Supreme Court has already held that allowing judges rather than juries to determine whether sufficient motivation exists to upgrade an ordinary crime to a "hate" crime - with its harsher punishments - is a violation of a defendant's due process rights. Under the constitution, the court held in the New Jersey case, a jury must make such a determination beyond a reasonable doubt.

Although death penalty cases were not immediately impacted by the court's Apprendi vs. New Jersey decision, Justice Clarence Thomas at the time wrote that making that determination "is a question for another day." In accepting Ring vs. Arizona, the court is signaling that the other day has arrived.

Is it conceivable that the high court will say that, under the constitution, juries must make the crucial determination in regard to hate crimes, but do not necessarily have to do so when the convicted's life may be forfeit? It doesn't seem likely.

Indeed, commenting on an earlier death case that seemed to run contrary to Apprendi vs. New Jersey, Justice O'Connor wrote, "If a state can remove from the jury a factual determination that makes the difference between life and death, it is inconceivable why a state cannot do the same with respect to a factual determination that results in only a 10-year increase in the maximum sentence to which a defendant is exposed."

The court's ruling is due before its summer recess. Florida has already scheduled three executions for early February alone. Since there is at least an even chance that court's logic in Apprendi vs. New Jersey will extend to Ring vs. Arizona, prudence alone would seem to dictate that the Bush Administration hold off on any more executions.

A crucial component of Florida's capital punishment process is undergoing scrutiny by the U.S. Supreme Court. This is no time to accelerate the state's machinery of death.

http://www.sunone.com/EDITS/articles/2002-01-20edit1.shtml

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Use delay in executions to change state's rules

Palm Beach Post editorial 
Friday, February 8, 2002

No one in the Governor's Mansion, the Legislature or the attorney general's office wants to acknowledge it, but a death-penalty moratorium exits in Florida -- and it's about time.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the execution of Linroy Bottoson just hours before he was to die. Last month, the high court stayed the execution of Amos King. Both actions arose from the court's decision to review death-penalty rules in nine states, including Florida, that give judges, not juries, the final decision on capital punishment. Gov. Bush then delayed the execution of Robert Trease, which had been scheduled for Thursday.

Ideally, the governor would have declared a moratorium to review all Death Row cases. Last month, Juan Melendez became the 22nd person to be cleared and released from Death Row. No state has freed so many condemned murderers whom courts later found to be innocent. Still, the governor's action gives him and the Legislature a chance to make responsible changes to Florida's death-penalty rules without having to wait for the high court's decision.

In Ring vs. Arizona, the case before the justices, the issue is whether the judge alone should be able to impose a death sentence. Florida law makes the jury advisory; the judge can override either a recommendation of a life term or death. Further, while the jury must vote 12-0 to convict, a recommendation of death requires just a simple majority. Until 1972, when the Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional, jury recommendations had to be unanimous. By 1976, when the high court reinstated capital punishment, the Legislature had changed the standard.

If the governor and the Legislature insist on retaining the death penalty, they should give the power of sentencing to the jury and require that the vote be unanimous. Gov. Bush said last month in the State of the State address that "our people . . . determine whether we rise or fall as a state." Presumably, the governor then would trust jurors to decide whether the community believes the state should apply the ultimate punishment.

Assistant Deputy Attorney General Carolyn Snurkowski, who is in charge of criminal appeals, said the state would continue litigating Death Row cases. Given the governor's action, that would be a waste of time. Instead, Ms. Snurkowski and her boss, Bob Butterworth, should persuade the Legislature that changing the rules makes sense, especially since most decisions to override a recommendation of life in prison are overturned on appeal. For once, the state could look halfway sensible on capital punishment.

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Orlando Sentinel: 02/10/02: The suspension of the death penalty gives Florida a chance to regroup.

The death penalty----Our position: The suspension of the death penalty gives Florida a chance to regroup.

The U.S. Supreme Court action that forced Florida to suspend executions presents an excellent opportunity for the state to take a critical look at capital punishment.

Unless the system for condemning and executing convicts is fair and constitutional, it will continue to risk being overturned by the Supreme Court. Certainly Gov. Jeb Bush acted appropriately when he put executions on hold while awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court that will decide if Florida's method for imposing the death sentence is constitutionally sound.

Yet Mr. Bush could do more than sit and wait. He has an obligation to look ahead and identify faults in the state's death-penalty system that would likely cause problems in the future. This can be accomplished by establishing a bipartisan capital-punishment commission to study the death penalty. The question is whether it is fair and effective.

When this newspaper -- which has supported the death penalty for many years -- suggested such a commission last year, Mr. Bush shrugged off that notion. Now he has another chance to do the right thing.

Closely examining capital punishment does not necessarily mean that the death penalty would be -- or should be -- abolished. If the system is fair, then death-penalty supporters shouldn't worry. If there are problems, doesn't it make more sense to fix them now than to endure another frustrating 11th-hour stay of execution?

Impaneling a death-penalty commission is not a radical idea. That's the route chosen by Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a Republican death-penalty supporter, who became alarmed when 13 people on his state's death row were exonerated. That 2-year study conducted by that commission is drawing to an end and will include numerous reform ideas.

Florida's system of capital punishment clearly has problems. Florida leads the nation in the number of people -- 22 -- whose death sentences were vacated because the defendants later were exonerated, or because of serious flaws in the way cases were handled. Those flaws included misconduct by police and prosecutors and by inept defense lawyers. During that same period, the state executed 51. The possibility of executing an innocent person should alarm any fair-minded person.

The immediate fate of capital punishment in Florida rests in the hands of the Supreme Court, which wants to decide if it's appropriate to have judges, rather than juries, make the final decision on the death penalty. If the justices decide that Florida is wrong, all 372 people on death row would have to be resentenced. That would throw the state's court system into chaos. Despite that concern, it would be inappropriate for state lawmakers to meddle in this until the justices have finished their work.

Future confusion can be prevented if Mr. Bush launches a commission to do a top-to-bottom review of Florida's death penalty.

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The Miami Herald: February 13, 2002

Death Penalty Roulette: Serious Flaws Demand State Scrutiny

Miami Herald editorial Wednesday, February 13, 2002

Florida's death-penalty system is dangerously flawed. In just the past year, Floridians have seen a number of inmates exonerated after they had spent years on Death Row.

In those cases, evidence barred from trial has come to light, overzealous police have been found to coerce confessions, and DNA testing has been used to free convicts. In the past 29 years, 22 people have been exonerated -- more than in any other state.

It is a shameful distinction that not even the most ardent death-penalty supporter should accept. It is a distinction, too, that should compel Gov. Jeb Bush to order a moratorium on executions.

The death penalty needs a top-to-bottom review and subsequent reforms that will root out inequities and errors that mar what should be a flawless process.

Florida's system is riddled with both faults, according to researchers based at Columbia University Law School. Their 23-year survey of death-sentence reversals found that Florida leads the nation in wrongful convictions. Defendants who aren't guilty are most at risk of being convicted and sentenced to death here than in any other state.

It is a frightening revelation. What's wrong with the system? Plenty, according to the study:

• Florida engages in a ''heavy and indiscriminate use'' of the death penalty. Because the state imposes the death penalty in such a broad range of cases, not just the ''worst of the worst,'' there were more errors here.

• Miami-Dade and Broward counties were among the highest-ranked counties in imposing the penalty.

• In counties with high-crime rates and large black populations, there are higher error rates in capital cases.

• Judges who must run for office may be pressured by politics to impose death sentences.

• Poorly performing law-enforcement agencies or departments increase the likelihood of error.

The research team developed useful recommendations for reform, including barring the death penalty for juveniles and the mentally ill, insulating judges from political pressures and finding ways to attract competent capital-defense counsel for poor inmates. These should be the starting point for state review.

In imposing a moratorium, Gov. Bush would be following the good example of Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, who, in February 2000, was alarmed at the number of Death Row inmates who were exonerated there.

The mounting evidence damning Florida's system cannot be ignored. When the state takes a life, it must not make a mistake.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/
editorial/2658534.htm

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Capital Punishment: Florida's grave injustice

Daytona Beach News-Journal editorial
Thursday, February 14, 2002

Three of every four Florida Death Row inmates could be there by mistake.

Three out of every four executed in Florida might have been killed by mistake.

Three out of every four death sentences in this state are overturned. It's the worst track record in the nation, and few leaders are even asking why.

They know they won't like the answer. The stock response in Tallahassee is to blame the state's sorry track record on an "activist judiciary," and scheme to limit the courts' ability to review cases.

That would only make matters worse. Appellate review has uncovered repeated evidence of collusion between police and prosecutors, manufactured testimony and altered evidence. Choking that review would allow even more abuse to proceed -- unchecked.

A recent Columbia Law School assessment of national trends in death-penalty cases found some disturbing correllations. Florida's zeal to execute, the report concludes, is a direct factor in this state's shamefully large percentage of reversals.

Other factors include the number of black residents in a state, and the race of the victim. The study also found a close connection between the level of partisanship in judicial selection, and the number of mistakes those judges made.

The study also made some recommendations, and they're worth listening to. The easiest, and most morally correct, answer is to abolish the death penalty. But barring that, there are reforms Florida should consider:

-- Make sure that death sentences are only given to the "worst of the worst" by allowing judges to compare other murder cases to assure that the death penalty is levied fairly from county to county. The death penalty should be barred for anyone with clearly extenuating circumstances -- such as extreme youth, mental illness or retardation.

-- Give juries a clear explanation of Florida law, which offers true life sentences as an alternative to death. Many Floridians believe, incorrectly, people sentenced to life are eventually eligible for parole.

-- Set standards that ensure jury access to all relevant information, and increasing the penalties for withholding or fabricating evidence.

The Columbia study was released a few days after Florida was forced to put two executions on hold -- with one stay coming just a few hours before a man was scheduled to die. It's a good time for this state's leaders to ask themselves: Do they really think justice is being served in Florida's current system?

Three out of four would probably say yes -- but every one would be wrong.

http://www.n-jcenter.com/2002/Feb/14/OPN2.htm

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St. Petersburg Times: 02/16/02: "Florida Roulette"

The death lottery---A national study on the death penalty shows that death sentences are issued - and overturned - with unusual frequency in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

A new study by Columbia University Law School demonstrates that Florida imposes the death penalty in a "heavy and indiscriminate" manner that resembles a lottery in which only an unlucky few receive the ultimate "prize."

The study examined death cases from 1973 to 1995 and ranked counties in the United States by the rate at which they imposed death sentences. Pinellas and Hillsborough counties had among the highest rates in the nation. At the same time, the study found that the error rate -- the rate at which a death sentence is overturned due to trial error or a prisoner's innocence -- is most pronounced in those counties with a high incidence of death sentences. Pinellas topped the charts at an 89 % error rate. Hillsborough's error rate was 72 %, still greater than the national average of 68 %.

In places where the death penalty is applied only in the most egregious cases, reversals were significantly less likely. "Imposing the death penalty in cases that are not the worst of the worst is a recipe for unreliability and error," wrote the study's authors. Florida was given a particular distinction by Columbia law professor James Liebman, who supervised the study. Because the state's application of the death penalty has been so faulty, he called our system "Florida Roulette."

An informal moratorium on executions is in effect in Florida and is likely to remain in place until the U.S. Supreme Court decides an Arizona case that could affect the way death sentences are arrived at here. Florida law asks juries to recommend to judges whether to impose death or a life sentence, but it leaves the final decision to judges. That process may have to change if the court decides it violates defendants' Sixth Amendment right to a jury verdict.

Florida's lawmakers don't have to wait for the court to make adjustments that would surely reduce error in death cases. We know that when a judge overrides a jury's recommendation of life in prison, courts have reversed those sentences upward of 80 percent of the time. We also know that appeals of those cases are clogging the court system. The law should be changed during this legislative session to give juries decisionmaking authority to impose death. As an additional safeguard, death sentences should require a unanimous jury. Errors also could be reduced, the study suggests, by barring the death penalty for anyone who is severly mentally ill or who commited their crime as a juvenile, and by requiring that aggravating factors substantially outweigh mitigating ones.

Whether a murderer receives the death penalty should depend on the heinousness of his or her act, not on the county in which the crime occurred. Because Florida's system has few safeguards to prevent arbitrariness, being sentenced to death is a matter of geography and chance. Just think of it as the state's second lottery system.

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Death cases, penalty rife with serious error
The Palm Beach Post
Monday, February 18, 2002

Another piece of evidence shows that the more Florida pushes the death penalty, the more Florida makes the case to drop the death penalty.

Two years ago, two Columbia University professors released A Broken System, their study of death sentences in the United States between 1973 and 1995. The research showed that state and federal appeals courts had reversed 68 percent of all capital punishment convictions because of "serious error," usually incompetent defense counsel or corner-cutting prosecutors. In Florida, the reversal rate was even higher -- 85 percent.

The follow-up study, released last week, examined why the rate was so high. Not surprisingly, the conclusion was that prosecutors and judges, trying to appear tough on crime, often overreached when seeking the death penalty. Rather than reserve capital punishment for what the study's authors called "the worst of the worst," state attorneys sought the punishment indiscriminately. The higher the rate of death sentences sought, the higher the rate of reversal.

Researchers cited five counties -- Miami-Dade, Broward, Duval, Hillsborough and Pinellas -- as having especially high reversal rates. Polk County also drew mention. Last month, Juan Melendez became the latest inmate released from Death Row in Florida. He was convicted in Polk County. When the judge reviewing the case ordered a new trial, she said prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense and the jury. There had been strong public pressure to find the killer.

Overreaching capital-punishment prosecutions tie up the courts with appeals and risk convicting the innocent. Beyond shifting decisions on sentencing to juries and requiring 12-0 votes for a death sentence, the Legislature could do little even if lawmakers wanted. All 20 state attorneys are elected, and each creates his or her own system for deciding when to seek the death penalty. The Supreme Court ruled that states cannot assign the death penalty for specific crimes, such as killing a police officer. Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer, a strong supporter of capital punishment, says there is "no change I can see except prosecutors being judicious" about when they demand the ultimate punishment.

Critics have attacked the study by saying that the authors oppose capital punishment and that they didn't demonstrate whether innocent people were killed. As to the first charge, no one has refuted the numbers. As to the second, others have done that work. One hundred Death Row inmates have been exonerated.

Each time Florida tries to speed up the execution line, the system reaches for the brake. Each cold, hard look at the cases shows why.

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St. Petersburg Times
Published: Friday, April 19, 2002
Section: Editorial
Shameful death penalty mistakes

More than two years ago Illinois Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on the death penalty and established a diverse commission to study its application. It was a humane response to the incontrovertible evidence that the state's system of imposing capital punishment was seriously broken. In a little more than a decade, 13 men had been released from death row after their innocence was established. One, Anthony Porter, came within 48 hours of being executed.

The commission was made up of 14 members with varying views of the efficacy and desirability of the death penalty, including highly respected prosecutors and defense attorneys, former FBI director William Webster and former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon. On Monday , only days after the 100th death row prisoner nationwide was released after being found innocent, the commission returned with a report worthy of the seriousness of the subject matter.

Its 85 specific recommendations were the result of extraordinary work and thought. Members painstakingly analyzed what happened in those 13 cases of wrongful convictions, and they more generally reviewed the hundreds of cases in which the death penalty was applied since its re-authorization in the state in 1977. The commission looked at death penalty laws and procedures in other states and invited the opinions of experts in fields such as police practices and eye-witness testimony.

The results were recommended changes in every aspect of the system. The commission suggested videotaping law enforcement interrogations and confessions, creating a panel to review prosecutors' decisions to seek the death penalty, limiting the use of the penalty when the only evidence is testimony by a jail-house snitch or single eye-witness and reducing the types of crimes eligible for the death penalty, among others.

Even in the rather formal writing of an administrative report, it was clear that commissioners were stunned by what they found. Commenting on the cases of the 13 men exonerated, the report said. "All 13 cases were characterized by relatively little solid evidence connecting the charged defendants to the crimes. In some cases, the evidence was so minimal that there was some question not only as to why the prosecutor sought the death penalty, but why the prosecution was even pursued."

In Florida, too, innocent people have been placed on death row by police and prosecutors more interested in convictions than in justice.

We are sentencing people to death under a system known for its errors and inaccuracies. And Florida's system doesn't provide the procedural protections found in Illinois. In Florida, a jury recommendation for death doesn't have to be unanimous, as it does in Illinois. Moreover, if a jury recommends a life sentence in Florida, a judge can override it and impose death, as has happened 166 times.

No one has yet calculated the cost of adding the protections recommended by the commission, but how do you put a price tag on changes that could save an innocent person from execution? Yet even if every change were implemented, the commission admits there would be no guarantee that an innocent person wouldn't be put to death: "The Commission was unanimous in the belief that no system, given human nature and frailties, could ever be devised or constructed that would work perfectly."

Gov. Jeb Bush has effectively put Florida's executions on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court decides a case that could put the constitutionality of our death penalty at risk. No public outcry has resulted. In polls, it is apparent people are feeling far less comfortable with the ultimate punishment. It would be a good time to abolish capital punishment entirely.

If that doesn't happen, and we are under no illusions it will, Bush and the Legislature have a moral duty to put in place many of the Illinois commission's recommendations. The same mistakes occurring in Illinois are happening here, and in every state with a death penalty. The national shame is that they have been tolerated this long.

©St. Petersburg Times
www.sptimes.com/2002/04/19/Opinion/Shameful_death_penalt.shtml

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Palm Beach Post
Published: Saturday, April 20, 2002
Section: Editorial
More reason for Florida to reform the death penalty

No capital punishment system "can or will be constructed which sufficiently guarantees that the death penalty will be applied without arbitrariness or error." No conclusion from the just-released study of the death penalty in Illinois is more vital.

Gov. George Ryan ordered the study two years ago, after he suspended executions. The governor acted when the 13th Death Row inmate had been exonerated and released. The study is equally relevant in the other 37 states, including Florida, that allow the death penalty. In Florida, where Gov. Bush and the Legislature have refused to believe that the system is anything but flawless, the study should be required reading, preferably with an open mind.

The Illinois commission examined the 275 death-penalty convictions since 1977, when the state resumed executions. Of those, 152 were reversed, mostly because of errors that appellate courts discovered. Only 25 percent of reversals resulted in new death sentences. The numbers do not include those who were exonerated. Reinforcing previous studies, the Illinois commission found that the victim's race determined who received a death sentence. If the victim was white, the killer more often got death. If the victim was African-American, the killer more often got life.

The commission made 85 recommendations, among them: videotaping of all interrogations in capital-punishment cases; creating a DNA database; establishing a state review board to review each decision by a prosecutor to seek a death sentence. The most controversial recommendation was to narrow the types of crimes under which someone is eligible for the death penalty: murder of two or more persons, murder of a law-enforcement officer, murder to obstruct justice and murder accompanied by torture. Convictions resulting from a single eyewitness' testimony or a prison informant would not be eligible for capital punishment.

Basically, the commission said that if a state insists on having the death penalty, the state should carry it out rarely. Florida, which leads the nation in releases from Death Row, reluctantly stopped executions two months ago when the Supreme Court decided to hear a case that could make it unconstitutional for judges to have any say in whether a killer gets life without parole or death. In Florida, juries recommend the penalty, but judges decide. Arguments in Ring vs. Arizona take place Monday.

Since Florida adopted life without parole in 1994, more juries have recommended that sentence over execution. It protects society by confining dangerous people. As the Illinois study confirms, it is the only way to ensure that society protects itself from the horror of killing the wrong person.

Original article

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St. Petersburg Times
Published: Saturday, May 19, 2002
Section: Editorial
Pondering Punishment

The death penalty doesn't have to be repealed, but it does have to be reformed if Florida is to stop wasting time, money and, worst of all, lives.

Jeb Bush spoke the other day, as he has before, of taking inspiration from his favorite governor, LeRoy Collins, whose racial moderation sharply distinguished Florida from most other Southern states during the late 1950s. Though some state Democrats may resent a Republican appropriating the image of their party's greatest hero, Collins' statesmanship transcended politics. No one's moral compass could be set by a brighter star, so Bush offers a good example to others in taking Collins as a role model for himself.

It bears remembering, however, that Collins strode ahead of public opinion not only with respect to racial issues per se, but also in regard to the death penalty. He opposed it as governor, as a member of two state commissions two decades later, as a private citizen, and finally as a columnist for this newspaper, in which he described capital punishment as "Florida's gutter of shame." Collins would be heartsick to know that Floridians will vote this year on a constitutional amendment, proposed by the Legislature, that undertakes not to abolish execution but to ratify it for all time as an "authorized punishment."

One doesn't have to believe, as Collins did, that taking life is inherently "unworthy of the state" to share the moral conviction of his objections to how capital punishment is practiced. As he expressed them to the Constitution Revision Commission in 1977, the execution of one criminal has never been proved to be a deterrent to another. Its application "is freakish, and its victims are almost always the mentally disturbed, the weak, and the poor who suffer grossly unequal application of the law. . . . Conviction of the innocent can and does occur, and death makes a miscarriage of justice irrevocable."

Time and events have proved him right. More than 20 people who had been sent to Florida's death row have been released because subsequent evidence proved them to be wrongfully convicted if not probably innocent. Moreover, former Chief Justice Gerald Kogan has expressed a belief that at least three innocent people were actually put to death.

Solid research has verified that race skews outcomes to a shocking degree. A 1991 study by professors Michael L. Radelet and Glenn L. Pierce established that Florida murders with white victims are almost six times more likely to result in a death penalty than in those with black victims. A black defendant accused of killing a white was 15 times more likely to be sentenced to death than if the victim had been black. Regrettably, these indictments have not done much to capture Florida's collective conscience. The Florida Supreme Court recently gave the state the benefit of procedural technicalities in a case in which the suppressed evidence of the defendant's innocence seemed strong. The court remains indifferent to the evidence of racial bias, which it rationalizes as an unintended result.

One progressive step was taken last year when the Legislature, with the governor's support, voted to prohibit execution of the mentally retarded. But there has been no corresponding enlightenment with respect to the mentally ill.

The Legislature insists on understaffing the legal offices that represent the condemned and refuses to recognize the many correctable ways in which justice can still miscarry.

The death penalty does not have to be repealed in order to be reformed, but it does have to be reformed if Florida is to stop wasting time, money and, worst of all, lives on what has become little more than a symbolic ritual.

For gubernatorial leadership on this issue, Floridians have had to look elsewhere: To Illinois, where Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions and appointed a commission that recently recommended 85 substantial reforms. To Maryland, where Gov. Parris Glendening -- an alumnus of Florida State University -- earlier this month halted all executions pending completion and legislative review of a racial bias study already in progress.

Lately, Bush has withheld death warrants also, but only because the U.S. Supreme Court had stayed several pending its decision in an Arizona case that calls Florida's law into question. The issue: Should a judge rather than a jury decide whether the facts of a case justify the death penalty? The result could conceivably leave Florida without a functioning death penalty, though that does not seem likely. In either case, Bush must already be thinking about what his response should be.

Perhaps he is asking himself what LeRoy Collins would do. But of course he knows.

 

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A St. Petersburg Times Editorial

Community's conscience

June 25, 2002

 

The Supreme Court has ruled logically in saying that only a jury can decide the facts that will determine if a defendant will face execution. Trial by jury is one of the oldest and most important of the civil rights that Americans have had the good fortune to take for granted. Except for trivial cases, people cannot be convicted of crimes unless their juries find that the facts prove them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge interprets the law and conducts the trial, but only the jury can say what the facts are. No one should want it any other way. It is axiomatic that a jury is the conscience of the community.

Logically, if belatedly, the Supreme Court has now ruled that the Sixth Amendment applies this principle to sentences as well as to guilt. It threw out the death-sentencing schemes of Arizona and (by implication) four other states where judges alone have had the duty and power to decide that there are aggravating circumstances justifying capital punishment instead of life or some term of years in prison. 

Florida is not one of those states; it is one of four that have had what the court called "hybrid systems" in which the jury gives sentencing advice that is not binding on the judge. Even so, Monday's decision in Ring vs. Arizona almost certainly tolls an end to the ghastly and much-criticized Florida practice of allowing judges to condemn defendants whose juries recommended life. There are said to be at least seven to 10 people of that category among the 370 inmates on Florida's death row. The courts or the governor and Cabinet should commute their sentences so as to spare the taxpayers the cost of appeals whose outcomes can now be safely guessed.

It isn't so clear what the Arizona decision portends for the many Florida death row inmates (no one knows quite how many) whose juries recommended death by less than unanimous votes. The only certainty, as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor predicted in dissent, is that much more litigation will follow.

In one school of thought, every Florida death sentence is vulnerable on the theory that jurors, knowing that judges have the last word, may have taken their "advisory" role too lightly. In recent years, however, the Florida Supreme Court has all but stopped approving death cases in which jury majorities recommended life. It has also been overruling a substantial number of sentences in which the jury death recommendations weren't unanimous.

Florida's fundamental problem is that while our law spells out the aggravating (and mitigating) circumstances that juries and judges must consider -- such as whether a crime was for money or especially cruel – only the judge is required to put in writing which ones apply to a specific case. That forces the Florida Supreme Court to guess at the jury's reasons when it's trying to decide whether to uphold or reverse the judge's sentence.

 

Florida's approach is difficult to reconcile with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's conclusion, in the majority opinion, that "the superiority of judicial fact finding in capital cases is far from evident." Unlike Arizona, she pointed out, "the great majority of states responded to this court's Eighth Amendment decisions requiring the presence of aggravating circumstances in capital cases by entrusting those determinations to the jury."

It is plain that Florida's Legislature has some work to do. It's just as plain that now, on the cusp of campaign season, is no time to do it. Gov. Jeb Bush should declare a moratorium on executions until the next regular session of the Legislature, when the issues on review should include not only jury sentencing, but also the many procedural missteps that make Florida the nation's leader in death row exonerations.  

 

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