Presssjr124 - Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

SJR 124 in the Press

Here’s what Florida’s newspapers have to say about SJR 0124:

The Daytona Beach News-Journal, published May 3, 2001
Editorial: Overkill on Death Penalty
The Florida Times Union, published March 27, 2001
St. Petersburg Times 3/13/2001
Tallahassee Democrat 3/11/2001
Miami Herald: 3/6/2001
Daytona News-Journal: 3/5/2001
The Gainesville Sun: 3/3/2001
Orlando Sentinel: 2/28/2001

Florida doesn’t need to change its constitution to execute 16-year-olds.

The state doesn’t need to make it easier to levy inhumane punishments. It
doesn’t need to hand off control of its own criminal-justice system to the
federal courts.

A Senate resolution, SJR 124, does all that and more. It’s billed as a “death
penalty preservation measure,” and would probably be sold to voters on that
misleading basis. But its most obvious and immediate impact would be to
remove the restriction against executing criminals who were 16 or 17 at the
time of their offense. Polls show that fewer than 30 percent of Americans
favor executing juvenile offenders.

This measure is unnecessary from any perspective. Florida’s death penalty is
gruesomely secure, as are the tough-on-crime credentials of the resolution’s
sponsor, Sen. Locke Burt of Ormond Beach. Many hoped Burt would allow this
bad bill to languish unheard. Unfortunately, it is on the Senate calendar to
be heard today, and a positive vote could send it to Gov. Jeb Bush.

Lawmakers should turn their backs on the cruel spirit of this measure — and
give it the defeat it deserves.

The Lakeland Ledger, Sunday, April 1, 2001

State lawmakers threw a fit last year when the Florida Supreme Court threw out a state constitutional amendment that supposedly protected the state’s right to carry out executions.

The court declared that the ballot language authorizing the amendment was false and misleading nearly to the point of constituting a fraud on the voters.

In truth, Florida’s ability to execute its condemned was never in jeopardy. And the state managed to switch from electrocution to lethal injection despite the amendment being voided. (One of the reasons the Legislature was so slow to switch to lethal injection was the fear that it would open a new avenue of appeal.)

Nonetheless, lawmakers continue to view some sort of death-penalty amendment as the constitutional equivalent of the Holy Grail. Thus, another proposed amendment is being pushed in the 2001 session. It would oblige the state judiciary to follow U.S. Supreme Court capital punishment criteria rather
than those of the Florida Supreme Court. If you suspect that amendment is being driven by the Legislature’s dislike of Florida’s highest court, you are absolutely right.

But critics say that, as a practical matter, the only real impact of the proposed amendment would be to allow Florida to execute death row inmates who were children — 16 or younger — when they committed the crime for which they were condemned. That would put Florida in the unworthy company of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other regimes
that make a practice of executing the very young.

“Even Texas, the nation’s most pro-death penalty state, does not allow the execution of 16-year old offenders,” argues the Miami-based Florida Justice Institute in opposition to the proposed amendment. “The majority of death penalty jurisdictions in the U.S. set 17 or 18 as the minimum age for the death penalty.”

In an attempt to finesse that issue, Sen. Locke Burt, R-Ormond Beach, is proposing a companion bill that would set the minimum age for crimes resulting in the death penalty at 17, as determined by the state Supreme Court in 1999. That late-filed bill’s chances of passage are questionable as
the session approaches its midway point Wednesday.

Some lawmakers may well want to beat their chests to show their bullishness for the death penalty. But what amounts to political posturing would put this state at odds with international law and basic standards of human decency.

It’s not worth it.

The Florida Times Union, published March 27, 2001

Editorial: Abide by voters’ will

The proposed death penalty referendum not only is good policy, it’s common courtesy to Florida voters.

By about a 3-to-1 margin, Florida voters approved a 1998 ballot measure authorizing capital punishment in the state constitution — a movedesigned to prevent the Florida Supreme Court from ever banning it. The high court, however, vetoed the voters by invalidating the election results, callingthe ballot language misleading.

In response, state Sen. Lock Burt, R-Ormond Beach, has proposed a new referendum — one with wording he thinks will pass the court’s muster. If approved by both chambers, it will go on the 2002 election ballot.

Burt’s proposal wouldn’t mean the state could never abolish capital punishment. Rather, it ensures any such decision would be made by thepeople themselves rather than the court. That is the arrangement the votersalready have overwhelmingly said they want, and it would be wrong to thwart their will on a technicality.

Capital punishment is the ultimate deterrent. Once a killer is put todeath, he no longer can kill anyone.

Some critics argue there is no reason to execute anyone, regardless how brutal or frequent his murders, because life prison terms adequatelyprotect society. But killers sometimes escape from prison.

Two convicted murderers got away from a Texas prison in December, and two others escaped from an Alabama penitentiary in January. An inmate freed himself by cutting a hole in the fence at an Oregon prison this month. Hehad been serving life terms for five murders. One of his victims had been tortured and buried alive.

If the people of Florida want more protection, defenders of the status quo shouldn’t obstruct them.

St. Petersburg Times, published March 13, 2001

Editoria
l: Executing teens?

Writing the death penalty directly into Florida’s Constitution may put teenagers at risk.

St. Petersburg Times, published March 13, 2001

Throughout the country there are unmistakable signs of mounting public concern over the breadth of the death penalty and the carelessness with which it is often applied.

Even so, the Florida Legislature is considering writing the death penalty directly into Florida’s Constitution, where it is now mentioned only by reference, in language whose immediate effect may be to authorize the execution of 16-year-old offenders. This would shame Florida before the world — and in the eyes of many Floridians themselves — like nothing else we could possibly do.

The Senate sponsor, Locke Burt, R-Ormond Beach, denies it would have that effect. So do his Judiciary Committee staff and the staff of the corresponding House committee, chaired by Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor. However, death penalty opponents have compelling arguments that the amendment would target 16-year-olds. The attorney general’s office has, in effect, said so.

The amendment is nearly identical to another that the voters approved in 1998 when legislators feared that the Florida Supreme Court would declare use of the electric chair unconstitutional. It changed Florida’s constitutional ban on “cruel or unusual” punishment to correspond with the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which uses the words “cruel and unusual,” and bound Florida courts to construe the issue “in conformity” with decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Florida Supreme Court overturned the vote last year because the ballot language, in the majority’s view, had misled voters.

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to invoke the Eighth Amendment on behalf of death-sentenced inmates who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crimes, but Florida’s Supreme Court, applying the more liberal state constitution, ruled two years ago, in Brennan vs. State, against the execution of 16-year-olds. In a subsequent brief in another case, which doesn’t directly involve a juvenile, the attorney general’s office argued that Brennan was “wrongly decided.” It would be bound by its own words if the Burt-Bilirakis amendment, which declares itself to be retroactive, is passed and ratified.

If killing 16-year-olds isn’t the purpose, what other purpose could there be? The electric chair, which inspired the 1998 amendment, has given way to lethal injection. If 16-year-olds aren’t targeted, the amendment should say so. If they are, then the ballot language should say so.

Not even Texas executes 16-year-olds and the only countries that do are Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Only one person who killed at 16 has been executed in the United States since 1976.

Attorney General Bob Butterworth remarked to a journalist last week that he thought neither public opinion nor American courts would allow it to happen again in the United States. But it nearly happened in Missouri last week — to a prisoner who is borderline retarded as well — before the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the execution.

Florida does not need — and should not risk — what Burt and Bilirakis are attempting.

“I’m not sure they need it,” says Butterworth. “If they think they need it and it’s important to them, fine.”

No, it’s not. It’s deplorable.

The following editorial appeared in the Sunday, Tallahassee Democrat:
http://web.tallahasseedemocrat.com/content/tallahassee/2001/03/11/opinion/0311.edit.htm

Sunday, March 11, 2001

Death Penalty Amendment is Overkill

Our death penalty laws are legally and morally sound in the minds of a majority of Floridians, especially now that we use lethal injection instead of the electric chair.

This year’s legislative agenda, however, includes two adjustments that, in a state where 20 Death Row inmates were eventually cleared, are important to pass. While the Tallahassee Democrat editorially supports the death penalty, we also support the ultimate in certainty against executing the innocent.

One proposal bans executing anyone who is “profoundly” mentally retarded. This is rightly supported by even most death penalty advocates. Another requires using DNA testing on all Death Row convicts. As Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, says, to wrongly execute someone is a crime twice: first for the innocent person and second for the guilty one who escapes.

Lawmakers also appear on the brink of an unnecessary move — one driven by their somewhat legitimate pique with the state Supreme Court. The court overturned a 1998 amendment putting the death penalty in the state constitution, saying the wording was unclear. But the court made this point after voters had agreed to the “confusing” amendment. Lawmakers felt the court was throwing its political weight around.

Now Sen. Locke Burt, R-Ormond Beach, is pushing a death penalty amendment — one that opens the way to executing 16-year-olds. It does so by conforming to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that doesn’t recognize 17 or 18 as the minimum age most death penalty states set.

Death penalty law should be left to lawmakers; it should not emerge from a political game of “gotcha” with the state court. Above all, we ought not be executing 10th-graders, whose “bad kid judgment” might compel life in prison, but not death. Even Texas, the toughest death penalty state, won’t go that far.

Florida must not be in league with Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and the Congo in executing those who commit heinous crimes at 16.

Keep SAIL small

Leon County’s School for Applied Individualized Learning is one of the school district’s success stories. It has thrived for years at its location on Macomb Street, with unimpressive physical facilities, but a small 1-to-13 teacher-student ratio and a family atmosphere that works. SAIL has a waiting list of some 200 students; the program can now handle 270.

Of necessity, the district is looking for better ways to use its physical facilities. This may mean consolidating or closing some under-used south-side schools. The district’s rezoning committee suggests moving SAIL out of its “temporary” housing to one of those south-side buildings.

Though losing its homey surroundings might be disruptive, losing the small size could undermine SAIL’s effectiveness. As district officials consider rezoning, they can’t ever forget that programs always trump their settings.

Miami Herald: 3/6/2001

Editorial: Lawmakers should respect court system.

Published Tuesday, March 6, 2001, in the Miami Herald

Had Frank Lee Smith led a more exemplary life his name might deserve to be memorialized in Florida statutes as with such other tragic victims as Jimmy Ryce. Still, the Legislature should make partial amends for wrongly convicting Mr. Smith of murder, then holding him on Death Row for 14 years where he died of cancer last year.

Ten months later a much-sought DNA test proved his innocence — a test prosecutors had blocked during the trial 13 years before.

That horrific mistake should remove all obstacles to a bill by state Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, requiring that DNA tests be used wherever possible on all Death Row convicts. As Mr. Villalobos says, to put someone wrongly to death is twice a crime — first for the innoc
ent person and second for the guilty one who escapes.

And in their session that opens today, legislators should adopt a bill that prohibits putting to death anyone who is “profoundly” mentally retarded. Also, they would be wise to amend the bill to require that juries levying the death penalty do so unanimously.

These three steps are the least that this state — where 20 Death Row inmates have been later found innocent — can do to ensure that the ultimate penalty is applied only to killers with the mental capacity to understand their crime, only after every scientific test available verifies guilt, and only after every juror that heard the evidence agrees death is appropriate. Unfortunately, many lawmakers appear intent this session on pushing bills that could needlessly expand the use of capital punishment. Others seem determined to turn judges into politicians. Much of this stems from the growing antagonism of House Republicans toward the Florida Supreme Court, which has blocked prior legislative efforts to curtail death appeals and whose rulings after the Nov. 7 election favored Al Gore.

Among the measures that we believe would undermine the judicial branch’s independence are those that would return to the dark days of elected appellate judges and justices, would limit the terms of higher court judges, would give the state Senate the power to approve judicial appointments or would give the governor exclusive authority to name members of the judicial nominating commissions, which review candidates for vacancies.

Meanwhile, a proposed constitutional amendment (SJR 124) — ostensibly to change Florida’s ban against “cruel or unusual punishment” to comply with the U.S. Constitution’s “cruel and unusual punishment” — has ignited concerns that this would open the way for 16-year-old murderers to be executed. The amendment’s sponsors heartily disagree. Still, the measure has no practical effect other than to allow critics to liken Florida to the Congo or Iran in its enthusiasm for capital punishment.

The Legislature would better use its time ensuring that the innocent, the mentally infirm and the young do not become victims of Florida’s judicial process.

Daytona News-Journal: 3/5/2001

Death penalty bill offers no benefit, much harm

Daytona News-Journal editorial

Civilized societies do not sentence children to death. They do not execute the mentally retarded.

Florida’s lawmakers don’t seem to grasp that. They’re pushing a constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would strip Floridians of basic rights and allow horrendous miscarriages of justice.

There’s no need for this legislation. Florida’s death penalty is grimly secure — despite the gradual shift in public opinion away from executions. Recent action in both courts and the Legislature rendered even speculative threats moot.

The situation was slightly different in 1998, when lawmakers asked voters to approve an amendment preserving the death penalty. At the time, the gruesome outcomes of badly botched electrocutions were fresh in everyone’s memory, as was the Florida Supreme Court’s admonition that the state was headed for a constitutional train wreck if its death-penalty law wasn’t revised.

That spawned a 1998 constitutional amendment, which was really aimed at preserving the electric chair, not the death penalty. The amendment didn’t prevent the eventual switch to lethal injection — but it did remove the state prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment for any crime.

That one word — or — has provided Floridians with an extra layer of protection against bizarre, arbitrary or downright crazy ideas hatched by lawmakers eager to look tough on crime. But the ballot language never let Floridians know they were being asked to surrender this protection.

Last year, the state’s high court properly threw the amendment out.

But the same bad language is back, worse than before and on rails apparently greased for passage. In both House and Senate, the amendment is ready for the floor — despite the fact that Florida residents can’t even view the House version of the bill. The Senate version (SJR 124) is available on the Internet, but the text of a crucial amendment is not.

Why the rush? Are leaders — like Sen. Locke Burt, who’s sponsoring the Senate bill — afraid to let constituents and colleagues get a close look at what’s happening?

If voters approve this, Florida will be the only state in the nation that specifically permits the death penalty in its Constitution. And it will be the only state that specifically permits the execution of minors.

If this amendment passes, Florida will be forced to rely on the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of capital punishment laws — which allow the execution of retarded criminals and inmates who were as young as 16 when they committed their crime.

Does this state really need to do anything to ease the execution of tenth-graders?

The Legislature could, of course, pass a law that sets a minimum age for criminals facing the death penalty. It could — it probably will — pass a law barring the execution of the profoundly mentally retarded.

But that won’t change the fact that this amendment is unnecessary, that it is being deceitfully advanced, and that it takes away protections all Floridians now share.

Allowing this amendment to progress would be a mistake, and one that should be abandoned before any real damage is done.

The Gainesville Sun: 3/3/2001

Editorial: A case of overkill

State lawmakers threw a fit last year when the Florida Supreme Court threw out a state constitutional amendment that supposedly protected the state’s right to carry out executions. The court indicated that the ballot language authorizing the amendment was false and misleading nearly to the point of constituting a fraud on the voters.

In truth, Florida’s ability to execute its condemned was never in jeopardy. And the state managed to switch from electrocution to lethal injection despite the amendment’s being voided.

Nonetheless, lawmakers continue to view some sort of death penalty amendment as the constitutional equivalent of the Holy Grail. Thus, another proposed amendment is being readied for consideration; one that would oblige the state judiciary to follow U.S. Supreme Court capital punishment criteria rather than those of the Florida Supreme Court. If you suspect that amendment is being driven by the Legislature’s dislike of Florida’s highest court, you are absolutely right.

But critics say that, as a practical matter, the only real impact of the proposed amendment would be to allow Florida to execute death row inmates who were children – 16 or younger – when they committed the crime for which they were condemned. That would put Florida in the unworthy company of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other regimes that think nothing of executing their young.

Lawmakers may well want to beat their chests to show their bullishness for the death penalty. But what amounts to political posturing would put this state at odds with internation
al law and basic standards of human decency. It’s not worth it.

Larry Helm Spalding
ACLU Legislative Staff Counsel
Tallahassee, Florida
www.aclufl.org

Orlando Sentinel

Editorial: Don’t execute kids
Wednesday February 28, 2001

It has been 60 years since the state of Florida executed a child younger than 17.

The rarity of child executions shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Society draws a clear line between children and adults. Children are more impulsive, lack maturity and judgment, and have less capacity to control their actions. That’s why the state severely limits children’s legal rights. Now, however, some politicians want to open a door that — perhaps inadvertently — could lead to the execution of children.

Sen. Locke Burt, R-Ormond Beach, is sponsoring a bill to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot on an unspecified date.

Executing children may not be the motive behind the amendment, but that would be the practical effect.

The amendment would force Florida to conform to the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings on the death penalty, instead of following the Florida Supreme Court’s broader rulings.

The state court’s rulings offer greater protections to children because the Florida Constitution now offers all citizens more protections than does the U.S. Constitution.

Several years ago the state Supreme Court recognized the clear line between adults and children in ruling against the execution of 16-year-olds. The state cannot withhold rights from children because of their immaturity and at the same time ignore that immaturity in sentencing children to death, the court said.

The U.S. Supreme Court, on the other hand, has left open the option for states to execute 16-year-olds.

Execution is the ultimate sanction. Because of its finality, government should use it only for the most blameworthy offenders and the most indefensible crimes.

Such a careful application of the death penalty is in keeping with the Florida Constitution’s historic prohibition against “cruel or unusual” punishment.

Mr. Burt’s amendment would take away that protection.

His proposal would make it easier to punish Florida’s citizens of any age, not just children. It would make it easier to impose any penalty, not just the death penalty.

Florida voters originally approved an identically worded amendment in 1998, but the Florida Supreme Court threw it out because of what amounted to false advertising. The amendment’s title and summary gave the impression that the amendment promoted their basic rights, not reduced them.

At the time, supporters argued that the amendment would protect the state’s right to execute prisoners if the courts found the electric chair to be unconstitutional.

That question is moot now that the state uses lethal injections. There remains no defensible reason to try to put the amendment on the ballot, especially given its implications for children.

That is not to say that children do not commit serious crimes, for which they deserve very serious punishment.

The names of 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill of Palm Beach County, 14-year-old Jonathan Arce of Oviedo and 16-year-old Rod Ferrell of Orange County come to mind. All made headlines in recent years after being charged with murder. Florida is a leader nationwide in trying children as adults — of which the state should not be proud. But certain crimes by children, such as the premeditated taking of a life, merit stricter penalties than the juvenile system provides.

Execution should not rank among those penalties.

Mr. Burt and other supporters of the amendment should drop the issue. Florida’s death penalty needs no added protection.

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
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