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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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Florida Supreme Court rejects death row appeals

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Florida's death chamber
The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected appeals by 2 death row inmates who were convicted of murdering women in the 1990s in Santa Rosa and Hillsborough counties.

One of the appeals was filed by Norman Grim, who was sentenced to death in the 1998 murder of Cynthia Campbell, whose body was found by a fisherman floating off the Pensacola Bay Bridge, according to a brief by Attorney General Pam Bondi's office. The victim, who was wrapped in a sheet, a shower curtain and masking tape, had been beaten in the face and suffered multiple stab wounds to the chest.

The other appeal was filed by Samuel Smithers, who was convicted in the 1996 murders of Cristy Cowan and Denise Roach. The bodies of the women were found in a Hillsborough County pond, with a 2002 Supreme Court summary of the case saying both women had been strangled and suffered other injuries, including "chop" wounds to Cowan's head.

The appeals dealt with issues related to a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case known as Hurst v. Florida and a subsequent Florida Supreme Court decision. 

The 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling found Florida's death-penalty sentencing system was unconstitutional because it gave too much authority to judges, instead of juries.

The subsequent Florida Supreme Court ruling said juries must unanimously agree on critical findings before judges can impose death sentences and must unanimously recommend the death penalty. 

Juries unanimously recommended death sentences for Grim and Smithers.

But the appeals decided Thursday involved questions about the other findings needed to sentence defendants to death.

Chief Justice Jorge Labarga and justices R. Fred Lewis, Alan Lawson, Charles Canady and Ricky Polston agreed to reject both appeals. 

Justice Barbara Pariente supported rejecting the appeal in the Smithers case but dissented in the Grim case. Justice Peggy Quince dissented in both cases.

 Source: floridapolitics.com, March 29, 2018


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