Study offers solid case for rethinking executions

There’s a reason Floridamoved away fromOld Sparky, its oncenotorious electric chair, to lethal injections: to avoid cruel and unusual punishments.

Truth be told, when Florida lawmakerswent into special session Shrimp, nearly15 sepia years ago to pass a lawallowing for lethal injections, the state faced repeal of capital punishment by theU.S. Supreme Court for its sole use of the electric chair, whichwas in possible violation of constitutional bans on cruel and unusual punishment.

Now, however, a new bipartisan review of capital punishment suggests that even the state’smove toward dispensing death more humanely has left Florida on the wrong path with its own troubled death-penalty system.

Abroad study by The Constitution Project— whose panel included GeraldKogan, former chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court— slammed awrecking ball into capital punishment, arguing for change “fromthe moment of the arrest to the moment of death.” It offers dozens of proposals, among them, abandoning drug cocktails to carry out executions for single-drug injections.

State lawmakers can no longer shield their own eyes fromcompounding evidence that Florida should put a hold, even temporarily, on executions.

Old Sparky had a tendency to deliver theworst of deaths administered by a state. It frequently malfunctioned. WhenJesseTafero was executed in1990, six-inch flames shot out of his head. Seven years later, 12-inch flames shot out of the head of PedroMedina. And in1999, a botched execution left the body of Allen LeeDavis bloodied fromhead to toe due to a chin strap put on incorrectly.

The botched execution that happened in Oklahoma could happen in Florida. The state uses a similar process to deliver death via injection.

Like Oklahoma, Florida is among several states that have scrambled the past year or so to introduce a new drug into the three-drug lethal dose combination used in executions. Pharmaceutical companies have stopped selling one of the drugs, pentobarbital sodium, to state prisons, so Florida, Oklahoma and others now substitute Midazolam.

Florida’s use of Midazolam in an experimental drug combination has been challenged by the last several inmates executed in recent months, on the grounds the new drug mixturemay deliver a cruel and unusual death.

Given the similarities between the two states, howmuch longer will it be before Florida has another botched execution, this time brought on by a faulty drug combination, problems with administering the injection or an inmate whohas a horrific physical reaction to the process?

Not to mention Florida faces other major problems with its death-penalty system. At 24, Florida leads the nation in inmates exonerated while on death row.

The list of issues goes on, each a good reason by itself to pull the gurney back and halt executions in Florida until reforms can be made.

Why are lawmakerswaiting for another botched execution to make a change? Why should Floridians put up with that?