FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Mark Elliott
FADP Director
(727) 215-9646
mark@fadp.org
TAMPA, FL (September 15, 2020) – The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) has released its report: “The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty.” Read the report here. This report is of great importance to Florida as:
- Never has a white person been executed solely for the killing of a Black person in Florida.1
- Florida’s first executions after 1845 Statehood were the February 10, 1846, hangings of four white people for “Aiding a Runaway Slave.” 2
- For much of the period from 1877 to 1950, Florida led the nation in per capita lynching with more than 300 known lynchings.3
- Florida leads the nation with 30 innocent people exonerated and freed from Death Row since 1973. 22 are people of color.4
Derrick Jamison, who is Black, survived 20 years on Ohio’s Death Row and six execution dates before being exonerated and released. In response to the DPIC report he stated, “The death penalty is modern-day lynching. They took me to the tree six times.” Today, Derrick resides in Tampa and is a Peer Specialist for Witness to Innocence.
Responding to the DPIC report, Mark Elliott, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty stated, “Florida’s execution system was founded on legalizing lynching, enforcing slavery, and upholding illusions of white supremacy.”
He continues, “Racism and the death penalty are the linchpins that enable and prolong the worst abuses of Florida’s criminal legal system: uneven and extreme sentencing, punishment over rehabilitation, and the waste of many millions of taxpayer dollars. Redirecting our death penalty dollars can benefit all Floridians by preventing and solving more crimes, protecting those who protect us, and promoting the healing of crime victims and their families. We can end the death penalty and create a just and humane criminal legal system where ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ and ‘Equal Protection’ are the reality and the birthright of us all.”
1 Amnesty International. (2018). USA: Darkness Visible in the Sunshine State: The Death Penalty in Florida
2 The ESPY File. Executions in the United States, 1608-2002
3 Equal Justice Initiative. (2017). Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror
4 Death Penalty Information Center. (2020). Innocence List
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