Florida's Death Penalty Flawed

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-florida.artoct11,0,1175462.story?coll=hc-headlines-editorials

EDITORIALS

Florida's Death Penalty Flawed

October 11, 2006

An American Bar Association report concludes that Florida sends more innocent inmates to death row than any other state, primarily executes those convicted of killing whites, and underfunds public defenders who handle death row cases.

Yet despite such worrisome conclusions, the Sunshine State remains determined to preserve its style of capital punishment.

The study by a team of lawyers and judges commissioned under the ABA's Death Penalty Moratorium Project found that none of the 60 inmates executed in Florida since it reinstated the death penalty in 1979 were white defendants who had killed African Americans.

Moreover, a high number of death row prisoners have been released because forensic evidence proved them innocent or raised sufficient doubt about their guilt.Authors of the study blamed Florida's horrendous record in part on a state law that requires a simple majority vote by a jury to impose the death penalty.

Past efforts to compel unanimous decisions have failed.

Unfazed by the study, Republican State Attorney General Charlie Crist has urged the Legislature to leave the law alone, using the weak argument that capital punishment deters crime and makes society safer.

Florida's approach to the death penalty is an abnormality even in the United States, the only Western industrial country that still subscribes to capital punishment. Most other states have exercised restraint, leading to a gradual decline in executions.

Connecticut has staged only one execution since 1960.

Capital punishment doesn't work as a deterrent, is unequally applied and should be abolished.

Barring that, Florida authorities should at least get in line with the majority of states that require unanimous jury votes in death penalty cases. Statistics cry out for such a change.