"Legal experts focus on Florida's death penalty," is the AP report on yesterday's symposium. It's by Bill Kaczor, via Florida Today. A slightly different version is available from the St. Augustine Record. Here's an extended excerpt:
A panel that included legal experts, academics and lawmakers on Monday renewed a push for changes to try to make Florida’s death penalty more just and prevent innocent people from being executed.
Participants’ views about their chances of success ranged from hopeful to despairing in a state that leads the nation with 23 death row inmates who have been exonerated.
“It seems to be a problem that may not be able to be solved,” said former State Attorney Harry Shorstein of Jacksonville. “What the public doesn’t understand is how expensive this litigation has been over the years.”
Shorstein, who participated by telephone, supports the death penalty but said he’s troubled with the lack of movement toward fixing its problems.
Florida State University’s law school sponsored the forum to mark the fifth anniversary of an American Bar Association study that criticized the state’s death penalty procedures and made a number of recommendations.
One was that juries be unanimous in recommending death sentences. Florida is the only death penalty state that lets juries make sentencing decisions or recommendations by a simple majority. Florida judges have the final say but must give great weight to jury recommendations.
State Sen. Thad Altman for a second year is sponsoring a bill (SB 772) that would require unanimous findings of aggravating factors as well as death sentence recommendations. His legislation failed without so much as a committee hearing earlier this year.
“I’m hoping ... we can at least get a hearing,” the Viera Republican told other panel members. “I don’t think that’s asking too much.”
The panel’s moderator, Mark Schlakman, senior program director at Florida State’s Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, was more optimistic.
Schlakman noted the new bill would apply only to crimes committed after Oct. 1, 2012. Prosecutors had been worried about it being retroactive to existing cases.
Also, since the last legislative session, U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez in Miami has ruled Florida’s death sentence law is unconstitutional because jury recommendations don’t have to be unanimous. The state is appealing. “Irrespective of where the appeal goes, it underscores the concern about that process,” Schlakman said in an interview.
Some lawmakers have opposed changes because they were afraid that might result in more appeals. Martinez’ ruling shows the opposite may be the case, Schlakman said.
In a prerecorded video presentation, former Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero said the high court as long ago as 2005 had urged unanimous jury recommendations.
The Florida News Service posts, "Symposium Advocates Unanimous Jury Verdicts in Death Penalty Cases," by Mike Vasilinda.
Meeting in the shadow of the state capitol, judges, lawyers, prosecutors and others debated how the death penalty is imposed.
“It’s the least that we can ask, that before we give the ultimate sentence to someone, that we require a unanimous verdict,” Sen. Thad Altman (R-Brevard) said.
At 24, Florida leads the nation in death row exonerations. Faulty eyewitness testimony is often the blame.
“The mind is not like a tape recorder,” Mike Minerva with the Innocence Project said. “It does not retain whatever images the person thought that they had
The experts say one of the biggest determinants of who gets death is simply which county your tried in.
Judge O.H. Eaton is a retired circuit judge from Seminole County with doubts. For 15 years he has taught a required class for judges that qualifies them for murder cases.
“That whether a person lives or dies has more to do with the judicial assignment than the facts of the case,” Eaton said. “Now, if that doesn’t show you that we’ve got a broken system, I don’t know what does.”
Yesterday's preview begins coverage from Florida; coverage of the Florida ABA Assessment is also available. A 2009 symposium at the FSU law school also examined issues raised in the ABA review.
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