Florida delays executions to consider death
penalty ruling
July 8, 2002 Posted: 2:36 PM EDT (1836 GMT)
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) -- Two
executions set for this week were put
off Monday by the Florida Supreme
Court so it can consider whether the
state's capital punishment law is
constitutional.
Word of the indefinite stays came six
hours before the scheduled execution of
Linroy Bottoson by lethal injection. Amos
King had been scheduled for execution
Wednesday.
Bottoson, 63, had already come within
three hours of execution in February for
the 1979 murder of Eatonville postmistress
Catherine Alexander. Alexander, 74, was
robbed, held captive for 83 hours, stabbed 16 times and crushed to death by a car.
"He was relieved -- again," said his state lawyer Peter Cannon. "He had again
finished his last meal."
King, 47, was condemned for the 1977 murder of
68-year-old Natalie Brady, who was raped, stabbed
and beaten in her Tarpon Springs home.
The stay gives the state justices time to consider the
impact of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month
in an Arizona case that the death penalty laws there
and in four other states were unconstitutional.
The court ruled that juries and not judges must decide
facts needed to warrant death penalties, but it was silent about similar laws in
Florida and three other states where juries play limited roles but judges make the
final decisions.
The court had issued stays for Bottoson and King while it was considering the
Arizona case but lifted them a few days later.
Lawyers for Bottoson, King and other death row inmates argued that when the U.S.
Supreme Court lifted the stays, it did nothing more than send the issue back to the
state courts to work out whether its ruling applied to Florida.
Attorneys for the state argued that the high court's lifting of the stays meant Florida
law was acceptable to the court.
Last week, a state judge in Fort Lauderdale affirmed the constitutionality of Florida
law in a separate case involving convicted killer William Coday.
Carolyn Snurkowski, who oversees defense of criminal sentences for the state, said
she hadn't yet seen Monday's court order.
Abe Bonowitz, director of the Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said
he was en route to the prison when he got word of the stay.
"It's always good to be on the way to a killing and turn around," he said.
There are 371 inmates on Florida's death row. |
