Today FADP took another stand to support Florida State Attorney Aramis Ayala in her lawsuit challenging Governor Rick Scott’s decision to remove Ayala from 23 capital felony cases as a result of her decision not to seek the death penalty.
FADP joined the American Civil Liberties (ACLU) of Florida, the nationwide ACLU, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), and the Sentencing Project groups to file an amicus brief with the Florida Supreme Court. The brief argues that State Attorney Ayala’s reasons for opposing the death penalty are sound and that there is no evidence that the death penalty is a more effective deterrent to violent crime than life without parole.
Florida’s death penalty system is seriously flawed with racial bias and costs taxpayers an estimated one million dollars a week, over and above the cost of sentencing those same people to life in prison with no parole. State Attorney Ayala should be applauded for courageously acting in the best interest of Orange and Osceola County residents by making her difficult decisions based on evidence, not emotion.
From the brief:
“Legislators and governors from Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico, and New Jersey have in recent years repealed the death penalty. And at least two elected prosecutors from other states have recently announced they would no longer seek the death penalty for similar reasons as discussed in this brief. The same sound policy reasons behind these significant changes suffice as a reason for a Florida prosecutor to decline to seek the death penalty and instead to pursue sentences of life imprisonment without parole. Nothing about Ayala’s decision in this regard constituted “good and sufficient reason” […] for the governor to remove her from 23 cases, much less gave him authority the Florida Constitution has vested only in the duly elected local prosecutor.”
Read the full brief here: https://fadpprod.wpengine.com/amici-curiae-brief/