FEATURED POST

Unveiling Singapore’s Death Penalty Discourse: A Critical Analysis of Public Opinion and Deterrent Claims

Image
While Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) maintains a firm stance on the effectiveness of the death penalty in managing drug trafficking in Singapore, the article presents evidence suggesting that the methodologies and interpretations of these studies might not be as substantial as portrayed.

Eleven jurors wanted execution. One held out. Inside Miami’s latest death-penalty case

Jury box
Kendrick Silver fatally shot a Coral Gables jogger and a Miami security guard in two senseless robberies. A jury agreed unanimously: Prosecutors proved his violent crimes far outweighed his troubled childhood and other reasons that might spare him execution.

But when it came to actually voting for the death penalty itself, one juror balked. Eleven others spent more than three hours trying to convince her that Silver deserved to die.

She would not budge. She wanted mercy.

So under Florida’s new death-penalty law, which requires that jurors be unanimous in recommending death as punishment for first-degree murder, the jury had no choice on Monday night but to agree to a life sentence for the 29-year-old Silver.

There is much to be drawn from Miami’s first death-penalty sentencing since the state’s new capital-punishment law was passed in March. For the state, the jury’s decision underscored what prosecutors in other states have long known: Securing a unanimous vote for the death penalty is no easy task.

“The state is asking for the most severe penalty on the books,” said recently retired Miami-Dade senior prosecutor Penny Brill. “It’s not supposed to be an easy thing. The state met its burden, as required by law, but one juror wanted mercy. I guess you could say the will of the community was not carried out.”

For defense lawyers and critics of capital punishment, however, the jury’s decision showed the revamped law worked, ensuring that execution is reserved for only the most egregious of killers — just like nearly every other state that still has the death penalty.

“The law is designed to give each individual juror the power to make their own moral assessment of what is the right penalty,” said Miami-Dade Assistant Public Defender Steven Yermish. “We have that ingrained in Florida now that we have unanimity.”

And for most of the ethnically diverse, seven-woman, five-man jury, the trial’s end felt frustrating.

“We were dumbfounded. Eventually, we got tired of trying to convince her,” juror Jesus Hernandez said. “She wasn’t giving us a reason to understand her decision. She saw a redeeming quality in him that we did not.”

Jury foreman Albert Zamora said he had “never felt so disappointed in my life” after Monday night. “It was about showing closure and mercy for the victim — the defendant showed no mercy,” Zamora said.

The holdout, a young Hispanic woman originally from California, could not be reached for comment.

Most states across the country that feature the death penalty have long required that juries be unanimous in imposing capital punishment.

Famously, in 2015, Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes got life in prison after one juror refused to impose death after convicting him of murdering 12 people. Another notorious killer, Arizona’s Jodi Arias, who shot and stabbed her lover in 2008, also got life in prison after two separate juries could not agree unanimously on the death penalty.

For decades in Florida, prosecutors only needed at least a majority seven votes for a death-penalty recommendation, with the judge ultimately meting out the punishment.

But the U.S. Supreme Court, in January 2016, ruled that Florida’s death-penalty sentencing scheme was unconstitutional because it gave too much power to judges, not juries. The Legislature changed the law to require a vote of at least 10 of 12 jurors to sentence someone to death.

The Florida Supreme Court, however, ruled that the new law was unconstitutional because jury decisions need to be unanimous. State lawmakers passed a new law requiring jurors to unanimously agree on a death sentence, although a judge can override the decision and impose life.

Under the new law, jurors can choose between life in prison or the death penalty, and for the latter they must first unanimously agree that prosecutors proved an “aggravating factor.” That could include a defendant’s violent criminal past, the “heinous, atrocious and cruel” nature of the murder or the young age of the victim.

➤ Click here to read the full article

Source: Miami Herald, David Ovalle, August 22, 2017


⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.


Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!



"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

California | San Quentin begins prison reform - but not for those on death row

Oklahoma | Death row inmate Michael DeWayne Smith denied stay of execution

Indonesia | Bali Prosecutors Seeking Death on Appeal

Ohio dad could still face death penalty in massacre of 3 sons after judge tosses confession

Iran | Couple hanged in the Central Prison of Tabriz

Singapore | Court of Appeal rejects 36 death row inmates’ PACC Act constitutional challenge

Pakistan | Christian brothers acquitted of blasphemy; three accusers charged