Mike Thomas, colum­nist for the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, recent­ly exam­ined the arbi­trari­ness of the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. ​“There is no rhyme or rea­son here,” he wrote. ​“A gov­er­nor’s deci­sion on whose death war­rant to sign, as well as a judge’s deci­sion on which appeal to accept, are about as arbi­trary as a pros­e­cu­tor’s deci­sion to pur­sue the death penal­ty. We spend an esti­mat­ed $51 mil­lion annu­al­ly on this non­sense, and for our invest­ment we haven’t exe­cut­ed any­one going on a year and a half.” Thomas exam­ined recent mur­der cas­es in the state, where the death penal­ty is pur­sued in one but not the oth­er, con­clud­ing that ​“The odds cer­tain­ly seem to favor those who can afford top legal tal­ent.” He saw lit­tle chance for change in this process: ​“A new drug that Florida plans to use in its lethal cock­tail final­ly sur­vived all the legal chal­lenges, includ­ing one by [death row inmate Manuel] Valle, only to be pulled by the man­u­fac­tur­er. A new drug will mean more chal­lenges. A fed­er­al judge recent­ly ruled that Florida’s death-penal­ty statute is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because the con­demn­ing jury does­n’t have to dis­close which aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances led to its rec­om­men­da­tion. On and on it goes.”

(M. Thomas, ​“When will state stop arbi­trary death-penal­ty deci­sions?,” Orlando Sentinel, September 7, 2011). Manuel Valle is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on September 28. See Arbitrariness and Costs. See also DPIC’s lat­est report, ​“Struck by Lightning: The Continuing Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty Thirty-Five Years After Its Reinstatement in 1976.”

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