Bill Cotterell Tallahassee Democrat

TALLAHASSEE – No other state has had as long and tangled a history with capital punishment as Florida.

An appeals court in Lakeland last week gave the state a minor victory in refusing to let circuit judges take the death penalty off the table in four murder cases that have not even come to trial. That’s how far through the legal looking glass we’ve plunged – “Did he do it?” matters less than “How you gonna prove it?”

The Second District Court of Appeal ruling will probably be appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, where death penalty litigation is already a logjam. The capital caseload is so great, the Legislature a few years ago passed a “timely justice act,” purporting to hold justices accountable for cranking these things out. The House even toyed with a constitutional amendment that would have enlarged the court and split it into two divisions – civil and criminal – but it got nowhere.

There’s another constitutional amendment likely to come up in the next couple of sessions, setting term limits for appellate judges. That’s not entirely a backlash against delays in capital cases, but having some clearly guilty men on Death Row more than 20 years is a provocation.

The Lakeland appellate court’s consolidation of four murder cases hinged on a little grenade the U.S. Supreme Court lobbed into the opening day festivities of the 2016 legislative session. Lawmakers touched up the statute to make judges heed jury recommendations of life or death, but they balked at requiring unanimous votes for execution.

Today, the Department of Corrections lists 384 men and four women under death sentence, with two active warrants pending in the state Supreme Court.

Gov. Rick Scott has presided over more executions, 23, than any of his predecessors. There have been 92 in modern times, as well as 26 “exonerations” – men who got off Death Row through various types of appeals including, sometimes, being proved innocent.

But numbers don’t tell the whole story. Every case is different in its facts as well as its legal precedents. And defense lawyers are pretty good at inventing new precedents, when existing case law doesn’t suit them.

Every session, there are bills to abolish capital punishment, which rarely get a committee hearing. State Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, a Tallahassee attorney, will have to find a new sponsor for her repeal bill, now that she’s term-limited out of the House. She makes a solid argument that capital punishment is not a deterrent, costs too much and takes too long – not to mention the danger of killing the wrong person.

But Floridians like our death penalty.

Polls may show strong support for life without parole, which is already mandatory when a first-degree murderer doesn’t get a death sentence. But nobody loses elections for being too tough on crime. To the contrary, governors from Bob Graham to Rick Scott have voiced varying levels of support – and legislators who have voted for even the most mild reforms have been battered by attack advertising at re-election time.

When John Spenkelink died in Florida’s electric chair in 1979, we had the nation’s first “involuntary” execution. The homicide case from Tallahassee was the first in which the condemned killer was still fighting in court. The Capitol became ground zero for mass demonstrations, as well as court action, of a size and intensity not seen again until the 2000 post-election presidential merriment. Graham was hounded by protestors, but it didn’t hurt his re-election in 1982 or his rise to the U.S. Senate four years later. And Spinkelink’s execution didn’t open any political floodgates to repeal the death penalty, as opponents had predicted.

A handful of other states have repealed their death penalties, and drug manufacturers have refused to provide the lethal chemicals now used in executions. Some governors have also indefinitely stayed executions, effectively spiking the law.

Florida, meanwhile, has executed some of the nation’s most notorious serial killers, like Ted Bundy in 1989 and Aileen Wornos in 2002. We were also among the earliest states switch from electrocution to lethal injection, prodded by our own Supreme Court. The justices clearly signaled their readiness to unplug the chair as violative of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual” punishment.

In the courts or the Legislature, this issue isn’t going away any time soon. Nor should it, as people on both sides obviously feel very strongly about it.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat reporter. He can be reached atbcotterell@tallahassee.com