Gerald Kogan, for­mer Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, who has also served as a pros­e­cu­tor, defense attor­ney, and tri­al judge, recent­ly expressed con­cerns about Florida’s death penal­ty sys­tem. ​“Florida’s sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is bro­ken,” he wrote in the St. Petersburg Times. ​“Florida’s jus­tice sys­tem fails on many fronts.” He point­ed out that ​“Florida has become the hold­er of a dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion: more indi­vid­u­als con­vict­ed of mur­der (22) have been exon­er­at­ed from our death row than any oth­er in the coun­try.” The state car­ried out its first exe­cu­tion on July 1 since the botched exe­cu­tion of Angel Diaz in 2006.

Justice Kogan was also con­cerned that pro­tec­tions were not in place to pre­vent further mistakes:

Mistakes in iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of defen­dants are com­pound­ed by Florida’s woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate sys­tem of pro­vid­ing those accused of cap­i­tal crimes with rep­re­sen­ta­tion at tri­al. The bar for inclu­sion in Florida’s Capital Collateral Registry — a list of attor­neys avail­able to try cap­i­tal cas­es — is set embar­rass­ing­ly low, and requires very lit­tle of par­tic­i­pat­ing attor­neys. The inad­e­quate stan­dards fall far short of the bare min­i­mum qual­i­fi­ca­tions estab­lished by the American Bar Association. Current Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul G. Cantero III recent­ly tes­ti­fied before the Florida Commission on Capital Cases that the rep­re­sen­ta­tion pro­vid­ed by these attor­neys is ​“some of the worst lawyer­ing” he has ever seen.

Justice Kogan cur­rent­ly serves as the co-chair of the Constitution Project’s bipar­ti­san Death Penalty Committee, which is com­posed of death penal­ty sup­port­ers and oppo­nents. The Committee has made more than 20 rec­om­men­da­tions for the reform of the coun­try’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. Kogan argues that Florida should imme­di­ate­ly adopt those rec­om­men­da­tions, adding that until that hap­pens, ​“Governor Crist should order a stay of all exe­cu­tions pend­ing a statewide review of his state’s death penal­ty.”
(G. Kogan, ​“Florida’s jus­tice sys­tem fails on many fronts,” St. Petersburg Times, July 1, 2008). See New Voices.

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