TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Supreme Court has delayed the execution of a death row inmate after his attorneys argued that the state should first determine how to apply a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state’s death penalty system is unconstitutional.
Michael Lambrix was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Feb. 11. The court on Tuesday said that it would be delayed until it issued another order. The court did not provide further details.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month found Florida’s death penalty system flawed because it allows judges, not juries, to decide death sentences.
Scott Browne of the Florida Attorney General’s office said the ruling should not apply to already-decided cases, and wanted the state to execute Lambrix as scheduled.
Lambrix was sentenced for the 1983 slayings of two people he met at a bar. Prosecutors said he killed them after inviting them home for dinner.
I know that it’s common for changes in legal standards not to be retroactive, but really, arguing that you should get to kill someone with a system that’s been ruled unconstitutional just because his lawyer didn’t get to the supreme court first?
Well then, strike down the system in Alabama too. I personally know a judge who did just that – overruled the jury’s recommendation of a life sentence in favor of a death sentence. Why do they do this? To avoid being seen as “soft on crime” – the only way they can get themselves reelected. I see this guy in church, heading up to communion. It sickens me.
Alas, there is plenty of anecdotal and historical evidence that people will adopt any kind of position, no matter how repugnant, to – in psychobabble terminology – “maintain a role” – that is, keep a job They will support torture, genocide, friggin’ cannibalism if that’s what it takes to keep that damned job.
Yup, see the Stanford prison experiment.
Yep, that and Millgram.