Duane Owen was 25 when he was sentenced to death in 1986 by Palm Beach Judge Richard Burk. He was convicted of killing a 14-year-old babysitter and a 38-year-old mother of two in separate attacks months apart in 1984 while children were sleeping in the homes he targeted. He was 62 when he was executed last June. By then, Burk had been dead four years. Burk was 87 when he passed away.
Living on death row
Delays, continued investigations, appeals, changes in state leadership and upheavals in the law combine to form a reality that, to some, undermines the death penalty’s potential effect as both a punishment and a deterrent to violent crime — many inmates who are condemned to Florida’s death row outlive the judges who send them there.
Those judges are often veterans on the bench who establish their qualifications to rule on such cases, said Maria DeLiberato, a former prosecutor turned defense lawyer who serves as executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
“What you sometimes get is people saying we should cut out the appeals process,” she said. “But you can’t cut the appeals process because Florida often gets it wrong. The appeals process takes a long time because it has to!”
According to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center in Washington D.C., Florida has had 30 exonerations from death row, while Florida inmates sentenced to death are eight times more likely to have their sentences overturned than be executed.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, the average age of an inmate at the time of sentencing is 27.4 years. The average age at execution is 44.9 years. But those figures incorporate trials and executions that took place over a period of nearly 50 years since the death penalty was reinstated in Florida.
Today it would almost be an issue of swift justice if an inmate were to be executed within 18 years of sentencing. Most of the 280 inmates currently on death row have been there since the 1980s and 1990s.
Some are already older than the oldest inmate ever executed in Florida (Charlie Grifford, 72, executed in 1951).
The state's longest-serving death row inmate is William Zeigler, who was sentenced in Duval County in July 1976. Judge Maurice Paul died in 2016 at age 84. Ziegler is now 78.
Dennis Sochor, 72, was sentenced in 1987 by Broward Judge Russell Seay, who died in 2011 at age 85.
James Rose, 78, South Florida’s longest-serving death row inmate, was sentenced in 1977 by Broward Circuit Judge M. Daniel Futch Jr. Futch died in 2009 at age 75.
Harry Phillips, 78, was sentenced in 1984 by Miami Judge Arthur I. Snyder, who died in 2004 at age 81.
Omar Blanco, 73, was sentenced in 1982 by Broward Judge Stanton Kaplan, who died in 2012 at age 76.
The longest-serving death row inmate from Palm Beach County is Paul Scott, 67. He was sentenced in 1979 by Palm Beach Judge Vaughn Rudnick, who died in 1993 at age 61.
Michael Rivera, 61, was sentenced in 1987 by Broward Judge John Ferris, who died in 2001 at age 79
The longest-serving death row inmate from Miami-Dade County is William Thompson, 72. Thompson was sentenced by Miami-Dade Judge John Tanksley, who died in 2002 at age 76.
Source: sun-sentinel.com, Rafael Olmeda, March 10, 2024
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