Florida Catholic | Executions To Resume; Question Is When

Executions to resume; question is when

JACQUELYN HORKAN | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 04.25.08

TALLAHASSEE | When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state-administered death by lethal injection is not a cruel and unusual punishment, Florida’s politicians reacted with an eagerness some found unsettling.

Gov. Charlie Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum congratulated the court and promised to get the state’s execution machinery back into operation. There are a few hurdles they must overcome first.

The first and only death warrant signed by Gov. Crist, for the execution of Mark Dean Schwab, was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court while the justices contemplated a challenge to Kentucky’s lethal-injection law. Even though the April 16 Baze v. Rees decision cleared the way for executions to resume, the Schwab stay was not automatically lifted. Schwab, who was sentenced to death for the 1991 torture, rape and murder of 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez, also has an appeal pending before the Florida Supreme Court.

Neither of these are considered significant obstacles by experts, nor are they expected to create considerable delays.

“We expect that once the machinery is in place, we will have several executions in a short time,” said Sheila Hopkins, associate director for respect life/social concerns at the Florida Catholic Conference. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they set an execution date in the next couple of weeks.”

According to Gretl K. Plessinger, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections, the state needs a couple of weeks to prepare for an execution. Usually warrants signed by the governor give the department several months to carry out its preparations, which include practice sessions and clearing schedules with witnesses and the execution team.

Executions in Florida have been on hold since December 2006 when then-Gov. Jeb Bush declared a moratorium following the botched execution of Angel Nieves Diaz. Witnesses said that Diaz, who took twice as long to die as normal, seemed to suffer excruciating pain during his 34-minute ordeal. Bush appointed a commission to study Florida’s lethal injection procedure.

The changes made as a result of the commission were under court challenge when Crist signed Schwab’s death warrant July 19, 2007. Critics of the new procedure call the changes window dressing; ironically the execution team will now close the curtains if they encounter any problems, such as occurred during the Diaz execution, so that witnesses will not be able to see what is going wrong.

“I think there are probably going to be more errors and mistakes,” said Hopkins, “but the courts say it’s not the infliction of pain that matters, it’s how much pain is inflicted. I think we have to question that.”

Along with the errors and the morally coarsening effect of the death penalty, Hopkins said the death penalty is a waste of money. According to one commonly cited statistic, Florida spent an average of $3.2 million on each execution carried out between 1973 and 1988. In 2000, the Palm Beach Post calculated that Florida could save $51 million each year by commuting death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“We spend so much money on the death penalty, why don’t we save that money and spend it elsewhere?” said Hopkins. “We have an alternative to the death penalty that protects the public just as effectively and saves money for other more worthy government services.”

Church Teaching

• Catechism of the Catholic Church: Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people‘s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.

• Bishops of Florida: The abolition of the death penalty would help to break the cycle of violence. It would manifest belief in the unique dignity of every individual and the sacredness of human life. It would acknowledge God as the Lord of life and it would be more consonant with the spirit of the Gospel.

• U.S. bishops: The death penalty diminishes all of us. Its use ought to be abandoned not only for what it does to those who are executed, but what it does to us as a society. We cannot teach respect for life by taking life.

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Executions to resume; question is when

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