Law experts: Fixes to death penalty ignored
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – Lawyers, current and retired judges and a former death row inmate Wednesday criticized Florida for ignoring suggestions on how to fix its death penalty procedures.
An American Bar Association team made the recommendations three years ago. A forum at Florida State University was designed in part to “brush off any dust,” said Sandy D’Alemberte, the school’s president emeritus and a former ABA president.
“There has just been a lack of political will, both executive and legislative,” D’Alemberte said. “I hope at some point people will understand this is such an expensive system we’re running and it’s one that’s been extremely ineffective.”
D’Alemberte said the forum’s purpose was not to advocate abolishing the death penalty but to push for changes in a system that one judge called “a morass.”
Sen. Victor Crist, a Tampa Republican who focuses on death penalty issues and chairs a committee that oversees court and prison system spending, said the Legislature has looked at the recommendations and decided most weren’t needed.
“To say that we have a dysfunctional death penalty system is false and misleading,” Crist said. “Florida is at the forefront of anywhere in the world that has decided to keep the death sentence.”
Some key recommendations are for unanimous jury votes to recommend the death penalty, improved jury instructions, uniform criteria to help prosecutors decide what cases should merit a request for death and better legal representation for appeals.