That's the title of a lengthy examination of Post-Furman capital punishment in Florida by Bill Cornwell in Florida Weekly.
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO , JOHN ARTHUR SPENKELINK, A DRIFTER FROM California who had been convicted of murdering a fellow transient at a flophouse in Tallahassee, was strapped into the electric chair at the Florida State Prison in Raiford.
Three years before, the U.S. Supreme Court had reinstituted the death penalty by overturning its 1972 decision that held capital punishment to be unconstitutional. Mr. Spenkelink was the first person in the United States to be put to death against his will as a result of the Court’s resurrection of capital punishment.
And:
The merits of Mr. Spenkelink’s execution were debated at the time, but no one could have known that his case foreshadowed the problems and controversies that still engulf Florida’s administration of the death penalty.
Earlier coverage from Florida begins at the link.
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