That's the title of a Tampa Bay Times column by Sue Carlton, on the Florida capital sentencing scheme.
We elect judges to make the hard calls, none of them harder than whether a man deserves to die for his crimes.
And could there be a tougher decision than the one Hillsborough Circuit Judge Emmett Lamar Battles will soon make on the fate of convicted cop killer Humberto Delgado Jr.?
Sentencing someone to death should never be easy, but maybe it's clearer when the criminal is a predator, a serial killer, a vicious person driven by greed or meanness. It must also help when the same jurors who said guilty then vote unanimously for the ultimate punishment, since the judge must give their opinion great weight.
The vote to recommend the death penalty for Delgado was 8-4, not unanimous as is required in other states, and more on that in a minute. And his case is a complicated one.
And:
Other states require a unanimous jury vote for death. Ours has the dubious distinction of being the only one that allows a simple majority vote for what might be the biggest decision an average person will ever make.
A pending bill would require that vote to be 12-0. If it goes nowhere because your legislators worry about looking like coddlers of killers, it's too bad. Because decisions like the one before Judge Battles — you know, hard ones — are what we elect lawmakers for, too.
The column also makes it clear that Delgado suffers from mental illness.
Earlier coverage of the jury issue in Florida is at the link. Alabama and Delaware also allow non-unanimous jury determinations in death penalty cases.
Related posts are in the jury and mental illness indexes.
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