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Death
In Florida A Cruel & Unusual History "The American
system of capital punishment is terminally flawed. With
Florida at number three in the nation, should we fix the
death penalty, or just end it?"
by
Alan Burngroft |
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In Stephen King's The Green Mile, a serialized novel
made into an Oscar-nominated film, the central image
of horror is that of a man on fire. A lovable, Cajun
Death Row inmate-a man capable of caring for a cute
little mouse despite whatever atrocious murders he may
have committed in the past-says his final, melodramatic
good byes, is strapped into the electric chair, then
sizzles, smolders and spasms for several excruciating
minutes. A sadistic guard neglected to wet the sponge
strapped to his head. Dry sponge, less current. Less
current, leaping flames, warden looking away in disgust,
black clouds of greasy smoke filling the chamber, long
screams of agony. Everyone shudders.
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The scene
probably seems a bit too over-the-top, even for Stephen King, but
here's the thing: It really happened. Think of it as the Florida state
government's gift to American horror.
In 1990, Jesse Tafero's head caught fire during a routine run of Old
Sparky, Florida's antiquated electric chair. It took three 2,000-volt
shocks to kill the 45-year-old. He'd been convicted of killing a policeman
in 1976 based on the testimony of a man accused of the same crime.
Then, in 1997, it happened again. Foot-long flames shot out of Cuban
refugee Pedro Medina's face for six to 10 seconds. He was 39 years
old and had killed his next-door-neighbor in an argument.
Medina's gruesome death was (pardon the pun) pretty shocking. Even
the Vatican condemned the act as "barbaric." But at the
time, Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth simply declared that
people who want to commit murder better not do so in Florida because
"we may have a problem with our electric chair." That bit
in the Constitution regarding "cruel and unusual punishment"
appeared not to be a consideration.
In the aftermath of that nightmarish death, Governor Lawton Chiles
called a brief moratorium on executions. One year later, Jeb Bush
was elected as our tough-on-crime, pro-capital-punishment governor.
The chair was back in business with a vengeance-four executions in
a week-and two little differences. First, there's a new chair. Well,
the wood's new-the 40-year-old electrical components are the same.
Second, Floridians convicted of a capital crime can now choose between
electrocution and lethal injection. A similar choice faced the hundreds
of men and women executed by Jeb's popular brother in Texas.
This would be a great solution if the only problem with Florida's
Death Row was people catching on fire. Unfortunately, it isn't.
There are practical problems. Let's not bring up Allen Lee "Tiny"
Davis, a 344-pound triple murderer who gushed blood like a fountain
during his July, 1999 electrocution in the refurbished chair. And
let's leave aside Bennie Demps for now. In June, 2000, he spent 33
minutes strapped to a lethal injection gurney behind a curtain while
executioners cut him in the leg and groin struggling to find a vein.
His last words were spent begging his lawyer look into how "they
butchered me back there." (A Bush spokesman claims the unusual
holdup was due to last-minute paperwork.)
Demps and Davis, at least, appear to have been responsible for their
crimes.
Frank Lee Smith wasn't. The Broward County man died of cancer after
14 years on Florida's Death Row. One year after he died, DNA evidence
proved he was innocent.
He was one of at least four men imprisoned for murder by Broward law
enforcement and then found innocent-a suspicious pattern that's still
under investigation.
Frank Lee Smith had a few things in common with Jerry Frank Townsend
and Timothy Brown. They all made confessions to Broward Sheriff's
Office Sergeant Richard Scheff, and they were all mentally retarded.
Brown's friend and fellow railroadee Keith King was a 17-year-old
of normal intelligence. But even he confessed to a crime it turns
out he didn't commit, the murder of BSO Deputy Patrick Behan. Someone
else who was actually in the right place at the right time confessed
to undercover cops this February. Townsend was set free last year,
thanks to DNA evidence.
Unlike Frank Lee Smith, Townsend, Brown and King have lived to see
the outside of prison. All of them-well, all of the adults, anyway-don't
have the mental equipment to understand what happened to them.
Florida's not unique in taking a lethally inflexible approach to mental
illness. This February, Alexander Williams was almost put to death
by the state of Georgia despite a US Supreme Court prohibition against
executing the insane. His guards force-fed him schizophrenia medication
to make sure he was mentally competent when he entered the death chamber.
He believes Sigourney Weaver is God and has conversations with imaginary
frogs in his cell. He also murdered a high school classmate when he
was 17. He's now 34. After a last-minute review of the mental health
evidence, Georgia commuted his sentence to life in prison. In Louisiana,
Michael Owens Perry is currently getting much-needed injections of
anti-psychotic medication only so he can be considered sane enough
to execute. In fact, this approach to the death penalty is getting
so common, the US Supreme Court is, at the time this article goes
to press, preparing once again to deliberate the morality of executing
the mentally ill. They're expected to decide by July.
Nationally, there are more than 3,700 people on Death Row. Nobody's
sure how many of them are mentally retarded. They don't keep track.
It's these kinds of cases that make capital punishment proponents
uneasy. When it's a clear-eyed, unrepentant murderer strapped into
the chair, it's possible to imagine the bureaucratic disposal of a
human life as a kind of justice. But when the convict isn't really
firm on the difference between Babar books and the elephants at the
zoo (much less real violence and the play-acting kind), then the ethics
get a little murky. That is, even if there is concrete evidence the
convict really did kill someone and didn't just say "yes"
to the policemen to make them stop being so scary.
Sadly, the problem isn't new-it's just taken a while to reach the
Supreme Court's attention. In 1992, President Clinton left the campaign
trail to preside over an execution in Arkansas. The condemned man,
Ricky Ray Rector, was so severely retarded, he didn't eat the dessert
from his last meal. He saved it for when his execution was over. It
was a piece of chocolate cake he never got to |
