STATISTICS ON ERROR RATE FOR FLORIDA
I have three urgent questions on this Columbia University study on innocent people released from Death Row...
1. Will Sec. of FL DOC, Michael Moore and his crew continue to maintain that all inmates are liars...
2. Does Jeb Bush really believe he never executed an innocent man?
3. If there's innocent people on death row, wouldn't there be many more people throughout the rest of the prison who ought to go home?
Visualizing Discernment
Kay Lee, MTWT In Florida
Pacific Institute of Criminal Justice
1868 San Juan Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94707
715-831-0076
kayleeusa@yahoo.comMore Prisoners Suspected of Being Innocent People in Florida's Prisons
http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/prison/innocent.html
THREE FLORIDA COUNTIES NAMED IN NEW STUDY
Full Report: http://www.law.columbia.edu/brokensystem2/
In a follow-up to a study released in 2000 by Colombia University scholars Florida again emerges as one of the states with the highest error rates in death sentencing. In "A Broken System, Part II," the authors of the two reports, which earlier found that an astounding 74% of Florida death sentences are overturned due to constitutional errors, the authors spell out why they think such high error rates occur. In the study, Florida's Pinellas County (St. Petersburg), Hillsborough County (Tampa), and Polk County are named among the ten worst in the country, due to that fact that "These counties had an average capital error rate of 71% at the first and last appeal stages, and eight of them put a total of 16 people on death rowwho were later found not guilty."
"This new report comes at a good time for Floridians who are concerned about justice in our state," said Abe Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP). "Now that we have a de-facto moratorium on executions, we urge Governor Bush and those who would lead us in our State Legislature to use this time to establish an unbiased commission to study our broken death penalty system, and to fix the flaws or abandon it altogether. Because the death penalty is a political tool, it may be too much to expect our politicians to become leaders by abandoning the death penalty, but each and every Florida citizen has a right to a system that is both accurate and fair. We currently do not have such a system."Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is pleased with the fact that this report offers a number of recommendations which can and should be applied to Florida's death penalty system immediately, while the legislature is in session. These recommendations include:* Requiring proof beyond any doubt that the defendant committed the capital crime.
* Barring the death penalty for defendants with inherently extenuating conditions-mentally retarded persons, juveniles, severely mentally ill defendants.
* Abolishing judge overrides of jury verdicts imposing life sentences.
*Using comparative review of murder sentences to identify what counts as "the worst of the worst" in the state, and overturning outlying death verdicts.
* Making all police and prosecution evidence bearing on guilt vs. innocence, and on aggravation vs. mitigation available to the jury at trial.
* Insulating capital-sentencing and appellate judges from political pressure.
"SUMMARY EXPLANATION"
The lower the rate at which a state imposes death sentences-and the more it confines those verdicts to the worst of the worst-the less likely it is that serious error will be found. The fewer death verdicts a state imposes, the less overburdened its capital appeal system is, and the more likely it is to carry out the verdicts it imposes. The more often states succumb to pressures to inflict capital sentences in marginal cases, the higher is the risk of error and delay, the lower is the chance verdicts will be carried out, and the greater is the temptation to approve flawed verdicts on appeal. Among the disturbing sources of pressure to overuse the death penalty are political pressures on elected judges, well-founded doubts about the state's ability to convict serious criminals, and the race of the state's residents and homicide victims."See the full report at http://www.law.columbia.edu/brokensystem2/.Shared byAbraham J. Bonowitz
DirectorFloridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP)Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty works for restorative
justice in the form of effective alternatives to the death penalty. It
does so by
# supporting and coordinating the work of organizations and individuals
# educating and energizing the general public and state legislators
# supporting the many persons affected by capital crime and punishment
# advocating specific legislative improvements*******State rate of flawed death sentences criticized
BY Gail Epstein Nieves
The Miami Herald
Monday, February 11, 2002Florida is home to five of 15 counties that impose the death penalty most frequently across America, ranking it among a handful of states at highest risk for wrongful convictions and making it the nation's leader in sending innocent people to Death Row, a Columbia University Law School team has found in a massive study released today.
Researchers found that in Florida and the nation, the more any state imposes capital punishment, the higher the number of ''marginal'' cases that get sucked into the system.
Such ''heavy and indiscriminate use'' of the death penalty -- instead of reserving it for the ''worst of the worst'' -- leads to disproportionately greater risks of serious reversible error, the study found.
''Over decades and across dozens of states, large numbers and proportions of capital verdicts have been reversed because of serious error,'' said Professor James Liebman, who oversaw the study. ``The capital system is collapsing under the weight of that error, and the risk of executing the innocent is high.''
Innocents are most at risk in Florida, which has had more people removed from its Death Row following findings that they were not guilty than any other state.
''Florida Roulette,'' Liebman calls it, referring to the troubling case of Death Row inmate Frank Lee Smith, among others.
Smith was exonerated in 2000 for the 1985 rape and murder of a Broward County girl after DNA evidence linked another man to the crime. But Smith's exoneration came 11 months after he died of cancer -- and after he lost multiple judicial appeals.
The 430-page report, a follow-up to a first report issued in 2000, is titled ''A Broken System, Part II: Why there is so much error in capital cases and what can be done about it'' Researchers examined 23 years' worth of death penalty reversals in 34 states with capital punishment.
Spokesmen for Gov. Jeb Bush and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle declined to comment on the report, saying their offices had not seen it.
Florida had 889 death sentences imposed during the study period, from 1973 through 1995, ranking it 12th highest out of the 34 states. Of the 757 that were judicially reviewed, 75 percent were reversed by state or federal courts.
THE FLORIDA COUNTIESDuring that time, Miami-Dade, Broward, Pinellas, Hillsborough and Duval counties ranked among the 15 counties that imposed the death penalty most frequently across America. In Miami-Dade, 103 people were sentenced to die. In Broward, 55 got the death penalty.
The report found that the 10 U.S. counties with the highest death-sentencing rates -- including Pinellas and Hillsborough -- had an average capital error rate of 71 percent, while the 10 U.S. counties with the lowest death-sentencing rates had an average error rate of 41 percent.
The study is being released at a time when Florida's death penalty faces pressure from various fronts.
The U.S. Supreme Court has postponed two Florida executions within the last three weeks. On Wednesday, Gov. Jeb Bush -- a death penalty advocate -- signed an order delaying another execution planned for the next day.
The delays were granted because of an Arizona death penalty case pending before the high court that could have profound ramifications for nine states -- including Florida, with its 372 Death Row inmates.
IMPLICATIONS
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Timothy Ring, the murder convict in the Arizona case, all 795 Death Row inmates in those nine states could have their sentences commuted to life or could get new sentencing hearings. State legislators might also have to change their death sentencing laws.
The issue the Supreme Court must decide is whether it is constitutional for a judge, rather than a jury, to decide the life-or-death sentence in a capital case.
In Arizona, the trial judge makes that call while considering mitigating and aggravating circumstances, without input from a jury. In Florida, the judge also has final say, but the jury first makes a recommendation.
For Florida, where judges run for office and are subject to pressures of all types, ''getting judges out of the sentencing business'' and leaving death penalty decisions to juries would certainly reduce a ''real risk factor for error,'' Liebman said, citing one of the report's suggested reforms.
Race, politics and poorly performing law enforcement systems also pressure counties and states to overuse the death penalty, increasing the risk of wrongful convictions, the report found.
More specifically, high-crime counties and states with larger black populations and where whites are at relatively high risk of homicide as compared to blacks have higher error rates in death cases, the study found.
LIKELIHOOD OF FLAWS
Considering all the risk factors, researchers identified Florida, Georgia, Texas and Alabama as the states whose death sentences are most likely to be found ''seriously flawed by the courts,'' Liebman said.
Jonathan Simon, a University of Miami School of Law professor who reviewed the study, said: ``You're looking at powerful political demands coming from white voters by and large to be tough on criminals, with frequent use of the death penalty in general.
``That translates down to the level of prosecutors -- who are elected in Florida -- and to police, who are both pressured to push more marginal cases.
Those are the cases where mistakes are going to be very, very predictable.
This study confirms that this is a real problem that needs fixing.''
With a de facto moratorium in place on Florida executions, legislators should use the ''time out'' to make fundamental changes to the state's death penalty law, heeding the report's findings, Simon said.
''For Florida, this study is a telegram, because we are it,'' Simon said.
``This is a place where the politics of the death penalty has been sending the message for a long time that death penalties are the gold standard.
Getting death sentences is important for political careers.''http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/2645920.htm
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