On February 15, Florida is sched­uled to exe­cute Robert Waterhouse, a 65-year-old inmate who was sen­tenced to death for a 1980 mur­der in St. Petersburg. Waterhouse has been on Florida’s death row for over three decades, longer than any inmate pre­vi­ous­ly exe­cut­ed by the state. His orig­i­nal death sen­tence was over­turned in 1988 after his appel­late attor­ney argued that Waterhouse’s tri­al lawyer erred by not pre­sent­ing the court with impor­tant mit­i­gat­ing infor­ma­tion. A sec­ond jury reaf­firmed his death sen­tence in 1990. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court reject­ed a peti­tion to spare Waterhouse because of tes­ti­mo­ny from a new­ly dis­cov­ered wit­ness and the destruc­tion of evi­dence that made it impos­si­ble to per­form DNA test­ing that might exon­er­ate him. Inmates spend an aver­age of 10 – 20 years on death row between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion. If the lethal injec­tion pro­ceeds, Waterhouse will be the 72nd per­son exe­cut­ed in Florida since the state rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1972. It will be the 4th U.S. exe­cu­tion in 2012.

(M. Stacy, ​“Florida poised to exe­cute killer after 31 years on death row,” Orlando Sentinel, February 15, 2012). See Time on Death Row.

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