"The death penalty: A dead end in Florida," is the title of Mike Thomas' Orlando Sentinel column.
Executing inmates is getting harder, more expensive and a lot loonier in Florida.
But kill them we must, and so the follies continue.
This year state officials added a new drug to their lethal-injection cocktail.
The Florida Supreme Court blocked its use last month until a hearing could take place on whether it poses "substantial risk of serious harm" to the condemned.
Only in the American justice system would that make sense.
This put a damper on Gov. Rick Scott's first signed death warrant, although Attorney General Pam Bondi came to the rescue with an immediate appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
It's all part of the $51 million we spend a year on the death penalty. Given that we haven't had an execution in 16 months, that would put the per-capita cost of the next one at about $75 million.
Even if Bondi wins, the issue will be far from settled.
And:
On and on it goes.
We can't hang 'em and can't shoot 'em. We tried frying them but that stopped when flames shot out the heads of two inmates.
Injecting seemed to be the humane alternative until it took 34 minutes and two rounds of chemicals to kill an inmate in 2006. Turns out they missed his vein with the needle.
Officials claimed to have fixed that problem, and now this.
When do we get to whacking the condemned on the head with a big black frying pan?
The best solution remains life with prison food and without parole.
Earlier coverage of Florida lethal injection issues begins at the link.
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