"State Rep. files bill to add firing squad to death penalty laws," is the NW Florida Daily News report by Lauren Sage Reinlie.
State Rep. Brad Drake filed a bill Tuesday that would eliminate lethal injection as a method for execution in Florida. Instead, people facing the death penalty would be allowed to choose execution by firing squad.
Electrocution still would be allowed under the bill.
Drake, R-Eucheeanna, said in a news release issued Tuesday night that he filed the bill in response to debate over the effectiveness of certain drugs used in lethal injection executions.
“So, I say let’s end the debate,” he said in the release. “We still have Old Sparky. And if that doesn’t suit the criminal, then we will provide them a .45 caliber lead cocktail instead.”
In the release, Drake said the bill was in reaction to a group of doctors and legal experts who had been asking Gov. Rick Scott for a stay of execution for Manuel Valle, a 61-year-old man convicted of murder in the death of a law enforcement officer in Miami in 1978.
Valle was executed late last month after 33 years on death row. He was the first Florida inmate executed using pentobarbital as the first of three drugs in the injection.
His lawyers questioned the drug, saying it had not been tested for use to render an inmate unconscious.
The Florida Current has, "Give condemned inmates firing squad option, lawmaker says," by Gray Rohrer.
A bill filed Tuesday by Rep. Brad Drake, R-Eucheeanna, would allow for executions by firing squad. HB 325 would eliminate Florida's standard method of execution, lethal injection, and allow for executions only by electrocution or firing squad.
He said he filed the bill after overhearing a conversation in his district this past month while U.S. Supreme Court deliberated over the fate of Manuel Valle, convicted in the 1978 murder of a Coral Gables police officer. Valle's lawyers filed numerous appeals, the last few of which centered around the use of a drug used in lethal injections.
In a Waffle House in DeFuniak Springs, Drake said he heard a constituent say, "'You know, they ought to just put them in the electric chair or line them up in front of a firing squad.'" After a conversation with the person, Drake, 36, said he decided to file the bill.
"There shouldn't be anything controversial about a .45-caliber bullet. If it were up to me we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge and be done with it," Drake said.
Under the bill, electrocution would be the standard method of executions, but the bill would allow inmates to opt for an execution by firing squad.
And:
On the other side of the spectrum in the Florida House is Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel-Vasilinda, D-Tallahassee, who filed HB 4051 last month to eliminate the death penalty completely in the state. She hopes to eliminate costs related to death penalty cases and apply that money to hiring more police officers and law enforcement, and is wary of the lawsuits Drake's bill could spark.
"It seems to be little bit regressive, frankly," she said. Rehwinkel-Vasilinda, 51, did hold out hope that the bill could help "clarify" the issue of the death penalty.
More on Florida HB 325, including the full text, is at the link. News coverage and commentary of Utah's 2010 firing squad execution begins at the link.
Comments