Today's Miami Herald carries the AP filing, "Legal experts focus on Florida death penalty."
Legal experts are taking a look at Florida's death penalty and preventing the execution of innocent people.
A panel including former Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero, lawyers and legislators will focus on those issues Monday at Florida State University's law school in Tallahassee.
The panel also will include Florida State President Emeritus Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte.
Also a former American Bar Association president, D'Alemberte, led efforts to create the Florida Innocence Commission.
The panel is examining wrongful convictions and making recommendations on how to prevent them in the future.
The Center for the Advancement of Human Rights has issued a news release, "The Death Penalty: Evolving Issues in Florida," listing the participants.
"Flawed death-penalty processes need review," is the Tallahassee Democrat editorial from Saturday's paper. Here's an extended excerpt:
On Monday at Florida State University, the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights will host a forum meant to shift the conversation about capital punishment — from whether it's good public policy to its fiscal implications and integrity.
Five years ago, the American Bar Association released its Florida Death Penalty Assessment Team report, which raised serious concerns about the fairness and impartiality of Florida's death penalty process. It called for a complete review of legislative, executive and judicial branch involvement.
The report didn't support or oppose capital punishment, nor was it directed to the method of execution. But it did reveal enough cases in which the wrong Death Row inmate was executed to raise concerns about the administration of justice. Yet little has changed.
It is this unnerving gray area that participants in the forum hope to explore when they meet Monday in the rotunda of the FSU College of Law. The event, from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., involves work of the ABA, the Constitution Project, which is a Washington-base bipartisan policy think tank, and participation by members of the Florida Bar's criminal law and public interest law sections as well as FSU's chapter of Amnesty International.
The need for a comprehensive review of Florida's capital punishment processes is almost irrefutable, in light of the flaws and shortcomings varying from inadequate legal representation to racial disparities, demonstrating that the death penalty is used more often when the victim is white than when the victim is black or another minority.
Florida has been on the brink of really looking at its capital punishment system and making more certain that the wrong person isn't put to death — and, of significant public concern, that the real criminal doesn't remain uncaptured and unpunished.
Yet the Florida Commission on Capital Cases, which had made recommendations on how to safeguard the integrity of the law, help unclog the appeals system and perhaps save money, was itself eliminated in May to save state budget dollars.
Some slight movement is suggested in legislation that's being considered — for instance, to require unanimous jury recommendations for the death penalty — and Florida TaxWatch may study the financial implications.
But more focus is needed, considering that Florida has eventually exonerated more death-sentenced inmates than any other state — sometimes after DNA evidence or confessions by the real killers proved the injustice, but posthumously in some cases, too.
Earlier coverage of Florida capital punishment issues begins at the link. Coverage of the Florida ABA Assessment is also available. A 2009 symposium at the law school also examined these issues.
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