In a Wide-Ranging Series of Editorials, the South Florida Sun Sentinel Argues for Abolition of Capital Punishment in Florida

In a wide-rang­ing six-part edi­to­r­i­al series ana­lyz­ing sys­temic flaws in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty, the edi­to­r­i­al board of the South Florida Sun Sentinel has called for the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. “[I]t is past time to repeal it, here in Florida and nation­wide,” the editors wrote.

The edi­to­r­i­al series, pub­lished from March 21 through March 28, 2021, cri­tiqued cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from a vari­ety of angles. The death penal­ty, the edi­tors wrote, ​“has noth­ing to do with pre­vent­ing crime. It can­not be applied with an even hand. There is no assur­ance that only the ​‘worst of the worst’ are put to death. It wastes mil­lions of dol­lars com­pared to the cost of a life sen­tence with­out oppor­tu­ni­ty for parole.” 

The edi­tors quote for­mer Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan, who observed the crim­i­nal jus­tice process over the course of 40 years as a state pros­e­cu­tor, defense attor­ney, tri­al judge, and supreme court jus­tice, on the cer­tain­ty that Florida has exe­cut­ed an inno­cent per­son. ​“There is no ques­tion in my mind that we cer­tain­ly have in the past exe­cut­ed those peo­ple who either didn’t fit the cri­te­ria for exe­cu­tion in the State of Florida or who, in fact, were … not guilty of the crime,” Kogan said. ​“If you say that no inno­cent per­son has been exe­cut­ed, you are just bury­ing your head in the sand.”

The open­ing edi­to­r­i­al con­cludes: ​“The death penal­ty accom­plish­es no valid pur­pose that can’t be ful­filled at less cost and infi­nite­ly less risk of mak­ing the worst pos­si­ble mis­take. No cit­i­zens and no states should want such mis­car­riages of jus­tice on their collective conscience.”

The Sun Sentinel edi­to­ri­als argue that the prob­lems with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment are endem­ic across the United States but remain par­tic­u­lar­ly acute in Florida, which by itself accounts for 30 of the nation’s 185 death-row exon­er­a­tions. The sec­ond edi­to­r­i­al looks at the finan­cial and moral cost of the death penal­ty. The paper esti­mates that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“has cost Florida an extra $223 mil­lion since 1972 to exe­cute 99 peo­ple who could be serv­ing life with­out parole instead, and is cost­ing some $800 mil­lion more for the 333 peo­ple still on death row.” Yet the leg­is­la­ture has nev­er asked its audit­ing and research arm to ​“cal­cu­late the costs with rea­son­able pre­ci­sion” or to ​“inves­ti­gate oth­er issues that go to the moral haz­ards of the issue.” It appears, the paper writes that Florida’s leg­is­la­ture is ensconced in a ​“shell of immoral indif­fer­ence” and ​“seems to not want to know” the answers.

In its third edi­to­r­i­al, Two men, sim­i­lar crime. One sen­tenced to die, the oth­er gets life in prison, the news­pa­per addressed the con­tin­u­ing arbi­trari­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Reviewing the his­to­ry of Florida’s death penal­ty, it said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s promise that new death penal­ty statutes would replace arbi­trary exer­cis­es of dis­cre­tion with a sys­tem that was ​“con­trolled and chan­neled until the sen­tenc­ing process becomes a mat­ter of rea­soned judg­ment, rather than an exer­cise in dis­cre­tion at all” turned out to be ​“non­sense.” Under the new death-penal­ty law, “[p]olice, pros­e­cu­tors, judges and juries would still have almost bound­less dis­cre­tion in charg­ing, try­ing and con­vict­ing mur­der defen­dants,” result­ing in con­tin­ued sig­nif­i­cant sys­temic dis­par­i­ties based on race, income, and men­tal health. ​“Comparable defen­dants are still treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly,” the edi­tors said. Further, appel­late review of arbi­trari­ness and new evi­dence has become increas­ing­ly lax, as ​“a new and fierce­ly con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty of jus­tices has repu­di­at­ed the oblig­a­tion … to con­duct pro­por­tion­al­i­ty review” and ​“has ruled against inmates in 56 of the most recent 58 cas­es it has heard.” 

The fourth edi­to­r­i­al address­es the fail­ure of the death penal­ty to deter crime. ​“There are some assump­tions peo­ple hold in absolute — but unfound­ed — faith that they must be true,” the edi­tors wrote. ​“One is that the death penal­ty deters mur­der. That’s like the faith of some prim­i­tive soci­eties that human sac­ri­fices would pla­cate their gods.” Citing data that ​“annu­al mur­der rates are con­sis­tent­ly high­er over­all in the death penal­ty states than in [states] with­out cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment” and that mur­der trends are unaf­fect­ed by exe­cu­tion rates, the edi­tors say that, “[a]s it has fall­en in pop­u­lar­i­ty and prac­tice, exe­cu­tion has come to be a ran­dom sym­bol­ic rit­u­al with no log­i­cal nexus between who dies and who doesn’t.” “[T]he bot­tom line,” they write, ​“is that the death penal­ty in Florida is capri­cious, unpre­dictable and unre­lat­ed to public safety.” 

The fifth edi­to­r­i­al doc­u­ments how exec­u­tive clemen­cy has failed as a safe­guard against wrong­ful exe­cu­tions. ​“Florida has exe­cut­ed 99, with no clemen­cies since 1983,” the edi­tors not­ed. ​“The his­toric ​‘fail safe’ of exec­u­tive clemen­cy is a fail­ure in Florida,” they write. 

In the paper’s con­clud­ing edi­to­r­i­al, the edi­to­r­i­al board not­ed that the death penal­ty has been ​“reject­ed by much of the devel­oped world [but] lingers in Florida because of its polit­i­cal use­ful­ness to politi­cians and their fear of being tar­get­ed if they oppose it.” With mul­ti­ple reform bills lan­guish­ing with­out action by the leg­is­la­ture, the edi­tors write that ​“the like­li­hood remains high that inno­cent peo­ple will be con­demned in Florida. The win­now­ing of can­di­dates for exe­cu­tion will con­tin­ue to be a ghast­ly game of chance.” 

Quoting Justice Harry Blackmun that ​“the exe­cu­tion of a pris­on­er with a strong claim to inno­cence would be per­ilous­ly close to sim­ple mur­der,’” the edi­tors ask, ​“When that is done in our name, what does that make us?”