A recent Florida case indi­cates that the deci­sion about who is the next per­son to be exe­cut­ed is more depen­dent on a few indi­vid­u­als in the gov­er­nor’s office than on an order­ly process. Richard Henyard is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion this month although 198 oth­er Florida death row inmates were sen­tenced to death before him. One such inmate, Gary Alvord, was sen­tenced to death two months before Henyard was born and has been on death row longer than any oth­er inmate in the nation. When asked how the Governor’s office chose Heynard before the oth­ers, Governor Charlie Crist’s spokesman Sterling Ivey said, Florida has no ​“hard for­mu­la set down on paper.” The state Department of Corrections did not par­tic­i­pate in the choice of Henyard in any way, accord­ing to a DOC spokes­woman. Henyard was select­ed for exe­cu­tion by the gov­er­nor’s legal team — General Counsel Jason Gonzalez and Assistant General Counsel Rob Wheeler — which reviews details of death-row cas­es, includ­ing ​“how heinous, atro­cious and cru­el the crime is” and whether the vic­tim was a child or elder­ly, said Ivey. With the sec­ond largest death row pop­u­la­tion in the U.S., 56 Florida inmates have been on death row a decade or longer than Henyard. Michael Radelet, a for­mer University of Florida pro­fes­sor who has stud­ied Florida’s death-penaly sys­tem explained, ​“The deci­sion on who is next to die is a polit­i­cal one and not a crim­i­no­log­i­cal one.” Assistant State Attorney Bill Gross, who pros­e­cut­ed Henyard, argued, ​“It doesn’t mat­ter who’s first and who’s 325th.” One of the fam­i­ly mem­bers in Henyard’s case, the moth­er of the two young girls who were killed, opposed the death penal­ty. She said in July, ​“It won’t bring back my girls.” 

(S. Hudak, ​“Inmate to die though 198 sen­tenced before him,” Orlando Sentinal, September 9, 2008). See also Arbitrariness.

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