DPIC’s Lethal Injection Page

ABA Report Finds Serious
Problems in Florida’s Capital Punishment System
A new report issued by the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project found that Florida’s appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty fails to com­ply with ABA stan­dards to ensure fair­ness and accu­ra­cy. This report was com­piled by an eight-mem­ber team com­posed of crim­i­nal jus­tice experts from Florida.

The report cites prob­lems in numer­ous areas, including:

  • Innocence- Florida has exon­er­at­ed twen­ty-two death row inmates since the rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty in 1973, more than any other state.

  • Representation- Counsel for the defense in cap­i­tal cas­es are not ade­quate­ly com­pen­sat­ed. Florida has a statu­to­ry fee cap of $3500 for death penal­ty con­flict tri­al coun­sel. Additionally, Capital Collateral Registry attor­neys have a fee cap, which cov­ers rough­ly 840 hours of work, even though it is esti­mat­ed that cap­i­tal cas­es will aver­age 3,300 hours of work.
  • Oversight- The report found that there is lit­tle or no over­sight of reg­istry coun­sel, which leads to a lack of account­abil­i­ty. Florida requires only min­i­mal tri­al and appel­late expe­ri­ence for reg­istry attor­neys to be appoint­ed to a capital case.
  • Juror Confusion- In a sep­a­rate study, 48.7% of jurors sit­ting on cap­i­tal cas­es in Florida erro­neous­ly thought that the defense must prove mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors beyond a rea­son­able doubt. Of these same jurors, 36% incor­rect­ly believed that they were required to sen­tence the defen­dant to death if they found the defendant’s con­duct to be heinous, vile or depraved.
  • Unanimity- Juror deci­sions in cap­i­tal cas­es do not need to be unan­i­mous. In the United States, Florida alone allows a jury to find that aggra­va­tors exsist and to rec­om­mend a sen­tence of death with­out being unanimous.
  • Jury Override- From 1972 to 1999, 166 of the 857 death sen­tences in Florida were imposed by judges over the rec­om­men­da­tion of life sen­tences by the jury.
  • Race- A defen­dant in a cap­i­tal case is 3.4 times more like­ly to receive the death penal­ty if the vic­tim is white than if the vic­tim is African-American. Since 1973, no white defen­dant has been exe­cut­ed for killing an African-American.

The report also makes rec­om­men­da­tions for improv­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty, including:

  • Innocence- The report rec­om­mends the cre­ation of two inde­pen­dent com­mis­sions. The first com­mis­sion would estab­lish the cause of wrong­ful con­vic­tions in cap­i­tal cas­es and rec­om­mend changes to pre­vent future wrong­ful con­vic­tions. The sec­ond com­mis­sion would review claims of inno­cence from those sit­ting on death row.
  • Representation- By allow­ing judges the abil­i­ty to deter­mine case-by-case the cor­rect pay­ment, attor­neys would be bet­ter com­pen­sat­ed for their time.
  • Oversight- The report rec­om­mends that Florida attor­ney stan­dards be con­sis­tent with the ABA Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases.
  • Jury Confusion- By redraft­ing the instruc­tions, Florida can address some of the issues that jurors are unclear about.
  • Unanimity- Florida should require a jury’s sen­tenc­ing ver­dict in cap­i­tal cas­es to be unanimous.
  • Jury Override- Judicial over­ride of jury rec­om­men­da­tions for life sen­tences should be eliminated.
  • Race- Florida’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem should com­mis­sion a report on the racial dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty and rec­om­mend ways to reduce those disparities.

Read the Executive Summary or Full Report of the ABA’s find­ings.

See DPIC’s Representation and Arbitrariness Web pages.

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