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Editorial: Old Sparky goes first, then the death penalty
The Palm Beach Post Attorneys went before the Florida Supreme Court Tuesday to argue whether the state should kill people with electricity or drugs. They were arguing the wrong case. The debate should be over why Florida continues to embrace a practice that could kill an innocent person. After the July 8 execution of Allen Lee Davis turned into a bloody mess, attorneys for the next condemned killer in line revived the argument of two years ago that the electric chair violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. It was a rerun of arguments from 1997, when another electrocution went wrong. That case also got to the state high court, which upheld use of the chair but hinted that the Legislature should switch to lethal injection. If the justices, two of whom are new since 1997, rule differently this time, the state will have to switch. Ideally, that move will lead to arguments about the death penalty itself, and the premise on which capital punishment rests: The state never makes a mistake. On Sunday, The New York Times reported that 82 people awaiting execution have been cleared nationally since the Supreme Court reinstituted capital punishment 23 years ago. Nearly half of those went free during this decade, as more groups have taken up the cases of condemned murderers, often using the same technology that prosecutors employ to make their cases. Reasons for the mistakes vary. Some defendants had lawyers who knew little or nothing about capital cases. In other cases, testimony or evidence that seemed solid fell apart. In the most egregious instances, prosecutors withheld information. Many defendants went to Death Row before refinements of DNA testing that might have cleared them. A Florida man was released in 1997 after six years on Death Row because tests showed that hair in the victim's hand came from a white man. The condemned man is African-American. Most of the 376 people (four women) on Florida's Death Row are guilty.
By their crimes, they have forfeited their right to live in society. For
Gov. Bush, the Legislature and Attorney General Bob Butterworth to assume
that the state could not have made mistakes is arrogant and reckless and
lowers the state to the killers' level. Ending capital punishment will not
and should not end arguments about guilt or innocence, but it will end the
chance of the state wrongfully killing in the name of justice.
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