FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – October 12, 2016
CONTACT: Mark Elliott, FADP Director, (727) 215-9646, mark@fadp.org
TAMPA, FL– Today, Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project released Part II of, Too Broken to Fix: An In-depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties, offering an in-depth look at how the death penalty is operating in the handful of counties across the country that are still using it.
Of the 3,143 county or county equivalents in the United States, only sixteen—or one half of one percent—imposed five or more death sentences between 2010 and 2015, and four of those counties are in Florida. The report notes that these “outlier counties” are plagued by persistent problems of overzealous prosecutors, ineffective defense lawyers, and racial bias.
Responding to the report, Mark Elliott, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty stated:
“Led by the outlier counties–Duval, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, and Pinellas, Florida has become one of the top two death sentencing states in the nation. It seems like there is always a death penalty trial going on somewhere in our state. However, what is ‘business as usual’ for us is extremely excessive when compared to other death penalty states.”
“A few overzealous state attorneys account for most of our new death sentences. The funds for these long, drawn-out, super-expensive death penalty trials come from the state treasury, so all Floridians pay heavily for the excesses in a few counties.”
“Since Florida resumed executions in the 1970’s, 92 people have been executed while 26 have been exonerated, that’s more than one exoneration for every four executions. No one knows how many more innocent people are on Death Row, or God forbid, have been executed.”
READ THE REPORTS:
Part I: http://fairpunishment.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FPP-TooBroken.pdf
Part II: http://fairpunishment.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FPP-TooBroken_II.pdf
Sent by:
Mark Elliott
Executive Director
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
www.fadp.org
FADP is a non-profit and non-partisan Florida organization of individuals and groups united to abolish the Death Penalty in Florida.