Death Penalty News

Florida's electric chair Renegade. Immune to national trends. Often tested, never defeated. Until this week. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida's unique capital sentencing system, saying the state gives too much power to judges, and not enough to juries, to sentence someone to death. The ruling threw Florida's nearly 400 death row cases into disarray. But upheaval is common to capital punishment in Florida, which is compelled again to fall into constitutional line. In 2005, our own state Supreme Court urged the legislature to reform Florida's system of capital punishment, which was followed a year later by a warning from the American Bar Association that the state law was likely unconstitutional. Still, executions continued. In fact, the Sunshine State is always near the top for the number of people put to death each year. We also lead the nation in exonerations. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 26 inmat...

Jeb Bush Private emails and interviews with associates show a man preoccupied with speeding up executions. During the 1986 gubernatorial campaign, one candidate demanded that the [Florida] Supreme Court start "burning the midnight oil" to plow through the [death row] appeals backlog. Another promised to personally "pull the switch" if elected. Tampa Mayor Bob Martinez pledged that if he was elected governor, "Florida's electric bill will go up." He won. In 1990, Martinez oversaw the execution of convicted cop killer Jesse Tafero, whose head caught on fire and whose body convulsed in a cloud of smoke and ash as he fried in the electric chair. He was shocked three times over the course of seven minutes . According to the medical examiner, Tafero did not die instantly; in fact, it took him six or seven minutes. Witnesses recalled 6-inch and 12-inch flames  shooting from his head. Another witness described seeing the body after the executio...

Hillary Rodham Clinton   Less than a month before the New Hampshire primary in 1992, Bill Clinton left the campaign trail and tended to a pressing matter. Rickey Ray Rector, a convicted killer, was scheduled to be executed in Arkansas. Mr. Clinton, then the governor, returned to Little Rock and was present in the state when Mr. Rector was put to death, a detour that demonstrated his toughness on crime. Democrats "should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent," Mr. Clinton had said at a debate a few days earlier, emphasizing, in general, the need to punish criminals. Nearly a quarter-century later, Mr. Clinton's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has taken a strikingly different tone. While stopping short of calling for the death penalty's abolition, she urged a "hard look" at its use, saying it had been applied too frequently, and often in a discriminatory manner. Last week, she said she would "breathe a sigh of relief' if the S...

George W. Bush (left) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (right) WASHINGTON (CNN) - Jeb Bush said Sunday he was "conflicted" about the death penalty and would like to see it reformed, but stopped shy of saying he opposed it. "I'm conflicted. I am," Bush said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It was the law of the land when I was governor, and I faithfully dealt with it. To be honest with you, it is not a deterrent anymore because it's seldom used. It clogs up the courts, it costs a ton of money." Bush signed off on 21 executions during his eight years as governor of Florida and has long-supported the death penalty. But he sounded apprehensive about its success in deterring violent crimes Sunday. "I'm informed by my faith in many things, and this is one of them. So I have to admit that I'm conflicted about this," Bush said. "But here's the deal, this happens in rare cases where the death penalty'...

The average age for Supreme Court retirements is just shy of 79. Wedged between the Republican and Democratic national conventions next July will fall an event of greater long-term significance for the future of the republic: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's 80th birthday. Barring unforeseen events, Kennedy will become the 3rd sitting octogenarian on the court - Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 82, and Justice Antonin Scalia turns 80 in March. That will mark the 1st time since George H.W. Bush entered the White House more than a quarter century ago that a president has inherited 3 justices that old. At 78 by then, Justice Stephen Breyer will be close behind. Of all the reasons why the high court will loom large in the presidential election - from a docket brimming with hot-button issues to intensive lobbying campaigns on the right and left - none looms as large as simple arithmetic and actuarial tables. The average age for Supreme Court retirements is just shy of ...

Criminal justice reform is the 1 issue that just about everyone seems to agree on right now. There are certainly disagreements over the details, but from the Koch Brothers to ThinkProgress, from Rand Paul to Bernie Sanders, from Newt Gingrich to Al Sharpton, from the Heritage Foundation to Black Lives Matter, nearly everyone agrees at least in principle that the system needs to be reformed. Oddly though, criminal justice is all but absent on the websites most of the major contenders for the 2016 election. I just reviewed the sites for all of the announced candidates. (I know, I'm a glutton for punishment.) The 1st thing that struck me odd is just how little discussion there is of any issue on the candidates' sites. Everyone has a bio, links to donate, links to volunteer, and a schedule. Some sites list the candidate's major pieces of legislation and accomplishments in office, which does at least give some indication of what issues are important and where they stand o...

Facts: Capital punishment is legal in 32 U.S. states. Connecticut and New Mexico have abolished the death penalty, but it is not retroactive. Prisoners on death row in those states will still be executed. As of October 2014 there were 3,035 inmates awaiting execution. Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court, 1,394 people have been executed. (as of December 2014) Japan is the only industrial democracy besides the United States that has the death penalty. In Japan, the 2013 per capita execution rate was 1 execution per 15,809,458 persons. Federal Government: (source: Death Penalty Information Center) The U.S. government and U.S. military have 69 people awaiting execution. (as of October 2014) The U.S. government has executed 3 people since 1976. Females: There are 57 women on death row in the United States. (as of October 2014) 15 women have been executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 197...