Urgent

A recent letter of yours to the Wisconsin chapter of Amnesty International crossed my desk and prompts this reply. You make some statements that need clarification, and other statements that are misleading.

1. In your first paragraph, you state that about 5600 murders have been committed in Florida since 1994. You do not say how many of these murders have resulted in a death penalty, and considering that your state's death row now has about 400 people on it, those on death row represent a fraction of the murderers sentenced since that time. This means that a small percentage of those convicted of murder are sentenced to death, and apparently none of those sentenced to death since 1994 have been executed. Does this reflect a reluctance on many jurys' part, or prosecutor not wanting to bloody his hands? It appears that your killing machine is not as efficient as it could be--- only a small percentages of murderers end up on death row, and errors of all sorts in the procedural machinery reduce still more sentences. I believe that three out of four murder convictions arer eversed in your state. This reflects poor prosectutions, not bleeding heart Justices. As a matter of fact, the murder rate is declining all over the country.
2. You state that justice delayed is justice denied. Tell that to James Richardson, or Randall Adams, who would be dead if their appeals were not slow. Tell that to Lloyd Miller, spared from the electric chair in extremis, because of a gangplank appeal that you would disallow. There are over eighty others that we know of, perfectly innocent victims of a justice system gone awry, and countless others we do not know about, because their cases were hushed up. Where is their justice? By your definition, it was denied. Even as a proponent of the death penalty, do you believe that it is OK to execute an innocent man or woman? If so, do you have the moral courage to stand up to your convictions? If not, will you make a statement to that it is not OK to kill an innocent, or duck the issue with political rhetoric? Justice implies the ability to separate the innocent from the guilty before damage is done to the innocent. This statement is philosoph-ically, theologically and legally valid in any system of justice or morality. The defendant in your present system(in Florida) is denied a chance to prove his innocence when he is, and that is far from a fair shake.
3. You say that appeals take too long; maybe they do, but look for the slowing step in the process, and try to correct it. They are a safety net that sometimes work, but are handicapped by all sorts of procedural bars, and except rarely do not second-guess a jury. You will find that the Courts are both overwhelmed by capital cases which take time to review as they should, since you have also stated that you value human life --..and the reluctance of the intermediate courts to write decisions (see what former Chief Justice Kogan has to say on this issue, and his out of state colleague, former Chief Justice Exum of the North Carolina Supreme Court). In North Carolina, I personally know of a first degree murder appeal sitting on a District Court Judge's desk for three years without action. You reduce appeals by conducting proper trials, without prosecutorial game-playing and sometimes plain dishonesty.
4. Because of man's infallibility, the chances that an innocent person can be convicted of murder is more than possible, and both police and prosecutorial misconduct in an effort to secure a conviction is rampant, so that the jury does not get a true picture. The government should not be insulted or lose its dignity by the wrongful conviction, and the obscenity of an execution of an innocent person.
5. Governor Ryan, in a courageous move, has called for a moratorium of the death penalty in Illinois, because he recognizes the high degree of error associated with its application. He is a proponent of the death penalty, but realizes that it is not working properly. It is morally reprehensible to kill an innocent person, as well as a guilty one, based on faulty evidence or tainted procedure. If the original trial was "fair", in both a legal and moral sense, the delays you decry would be minimal, since there would be few issues on which to base an appeal. And the only trial would cost less. For example, Vernon Amos was tried five times for capital murder in Palm Beach County, the first four convictions and death sentences reversed, and he was finally given a life sentence for two murders in Palm Beach County.
6. You talk about Justice for the "family" of the victims: As a group their sense of justice is not clear. Your legislature did not permit those family members of victims who were against the death penalty to speak in your blitzkrieg session hell-bent on speeding up the killing process--- hardly a plenary session. The killer's family are also victims in a true sense, often entirely innocent, unless you believe in sippenhaft, and if so have the courage to say so. There is never any closure after a traumatic sudden death, and to pretend that there is closure is a cruel trick to play on the loved ones of a murder victim. Not every one believes in a strict application of lex talonis

Governor, do you want your only claim to immortality to be that you have more blood on your hands than any other person in the United States except your elder brother? Execute those you feel you must -- and I categorically disagree with the death sentence in principle-- but at least with the knowledge that each execution has resulted in a fair trial, and every possible appeal fairly adjudicated, with no doubt of de facto guilt.

The entire world looks to the United States for moral leadership-- You have a chance to lead by reappraising your stand on the death penalty, as Governor Ryan did.. Do it!

Respectfully

G M Larkin MD

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