Florida Republicans Hope To Wrongfully Execute Even More People Now

Two proposed bills would expand executions in the state with the highest number of death row exonerations.

Last night, the state of Florida executed Louis Gaskin. As anti-death-penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean noted on Twitter, "Gaskin, a Black man, was sentenced to death by a non-unanimous, all-white jury. Four of the jurors voted for a life sentence and several more jurors now say they wish they had also voted against a death sentence." If he had been found guilty today, he would not have been executed, as the state has required that juries voting on the death penalty must be in unanimous agreement.

Gaskin, like many of those sentenced to death, had been the victim of severe child abuse growing up and also suffered from brain damage, schizotypal personality disorder, and schizophrenia.

This doesn't sound like the kind of thing people might read about and go "Yes, let's have more of that, please!" — but the only issue Florida Republicans had with this scenario is that juries can no longer send people to death row with an 8-4 majority.

Republican lawmakers proposed a bill towards the end of last month that would have eliminated the unanimous requirement, a move supported by notorious lover of bad ideas Governor Ron DeSantis.

“Justice is not one person nullifying an otherwise appropriate and lawful sentence,” DeSantis said, clearly misunderstanding the entire concept of juries.

Several lawmakers have suggested that this was inspired by the fact that Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz was given a life sentence rather than the death penalty because only nine of the people on the 12-person jury voted in favor of it.

"Obviously, we cannot roll back the clock and get justice for the Parkland parents, but this would address a situation like that in the future," House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said.

To speak of the death penalty as being "justice" is quite a leap. Sure, some people might find it satisfying, but it's not justice. It's not going to bring their kids back and it sure as hell isn't going to prevent anyone else from being killed that way the way that better gun control would. Indeed, the thing many of these mass shooters have in common with supporters of the death penalty is that they both believe murder is a great way to redress their grievances and get "justice." Frequently, even, these shooters hope that their attacks will serve as a deterrent from people doing or being whatever it is they are mad at.

However, even if some victim's families might want the death penalty, it may not actually help them in the long run. A landmark 2012 study found that murder victims' families in Minnesota, where the death penalty is illegal, demonstrated “higher levels of physical, psychological and behavioral health,” than those in Texas, where it is not.

Other lawmakers in Florida have proposed a bill (HB 1297, SB 1342) that would allow for the death penalty for those convicted of sexual battery on a child under the age of 12.

As disturbing as such a crime is, it is not currently legal to sentence someone to the death penalty in Florida or the United States for rape. In 2008's  Kennedy v. Louisiana , the United States Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that allowed for the death penalty for raping a child under the age of 12. In 1981's  Buford v. State  the Florida Supreme Court held that the death penalty for the rape of an adult woman was cruel and unusual punishment because it was grossly disproportionate to the crime committed.

The proposed bill holds that both of those decisions were wrongly decided.

Florida has had more wrongful death row convictions than any other state. To a person with the least bit of sense, this just might be a pretty strong sign that perhaps they are not quite good enough at correctly determining guilt to warrant the death penalty for anything at all. The state was also notable for being the site of several of Janet Reno's crazy ass day care child sex abuse hysteria cases in the 1980s and '90s, in which many people were wrongfully and ridiculously convicted.

One might be able to understand people being for it at a time when it was a societal norm — when countries similar to our own did it as well. When they didn't consider it such an incredible human rights violation that they literally banned pharmaceutical companies from selling the United States the drugs necessary for lethal injections, causing said lethal injections to be routinely botched. It might have been comprehensible at a time when people didn't understand how common wrongful convictions are, or when they didn't understand that it wasn't actually a deterrent — or that murder rates actually dropped in many countries after they eliminated the death penalty.

It's almost as if people are less likely to kill people when they don't live in a place where it is implied that murder is an acceptable form of revenge.

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