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Justice says he doubts
all executed were guilty Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE - Twenty-five people have
died in Florida's electric chair in the 12 years Justice Gerald Kogan has
served on the state Supreme Court. The retiring justice believes some of
them might have been innocent.
"There are several cases
where I had grave doubts as to the guilt of a particular person,
(and) other cases where I just felt they were treated unfairly in the system,"
Kogan said.
Kogan, who asked juries to recommend
the death penalty as a Miami prosecutor, has long believed capital punishment
isn't working. Since he was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1987, he
has ruled on hundreds of capital appeals.
In an interview last week with the
Associated Press, he said he wasn't convinced of the guilt of the condemned
person in "two or three" capital cases that ended in execution.
Although he wouldn't say who he believed was innocent, Kogan said he voted
to stop the executions. But he couldn't get a majority of the other justices
to agree with him, and no justice holds veto power over the others.
Justice Ben Overton, who is retiring
eady next year after 24 years on Florida's high court, said he doesn't
discuss his views on capital punishment. Chief Justice Major Harding also
does not comment on the death penalty.
Kogan, who could stay on the Supreme
Court another five years if he wanted, said he's ready for new challenges
and has taken a job starting next March as the head of a group dedicated
to promoting ethical government in Miami Dade County.
Before Kogan was appointed to the court,
he worked as a prosecutor, defense attorney and trial judge in Miami. He
estimated he's handled 1,200 capital cases. As a prosecutor in the capital
felony division, Kogan had to visit murder scenes, work with victims' families
and ask juries to recommend death sentences.
However, he said he has long held that
capital punishment "just doesn't work," even though execution may be warranted
in some cases.
"I've had people say to me, 'Oh, you
bleeding heart liberals,'" Kogan said last week. "And I say wait a minute
. . . when I was with the homicide and capital crimes, one of our duties
was to go to the scene of homicides, and I have seen many a dead body under
all sorts of circumstances."
But state Rep. Victor Crist, R - Temple
Terrace, chairman of the House Criminal Justice' and Corrections Council,
said Kogan has been "on the record as being an adversary to capital punishment."
Despite Kogan's doubts, Crist's faith
in the process is unshaken. "Do I think we've executed innocent people?"
he asked. "No."
He pointed to the length of the appeals
process.
"Not one, not two, not five, not 10,
but dozens of people have re viewed and re-reviewed and reviewed the cases
before someone is executed in this state," said Crist.
Since the state resumed capital punishment
in the late 1970s, after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a four-year national
moratorium on executions, Florida has executed 43 people.
Kogan cited research by Michael Radelet,
a professor of sociology at the University of Florida and death-penalty
opponent, who has documented 26 cases where Radelet believes innocent people
were executed,
And since DNA evidence began making
a difference in the last 10 years or so, 53 people across the nation have
been released from death row, Kogan said.
"But how about .. . before we could
rely upon DNA?" Kogan asked. "what happened to those people?"
Kogan pointed to the millions of dollars
spent on appeals that go on for years - with the state usually paying lawyers
on both side. He also cited the time it takes the Supreme Court to review
every death sentence handed down in Florida and then every appeal. The
seven justices spend anywhere from a quarter to half their time on capital
cases even though they're just 3 percent of the caseload.
Despite all that time and money, capital
punishment doesn't stop murders, Kogan said. 'When you compare those states
with'capital punishment to those states that don't have capital punishment,
there's hardly any statistical difference at all."
For Kogan, there is one argument that
is more compelling than any other - on either side of the debate.
'To me, the only valid reason - . .
and the one that really rings true is the possibility of making a mistake
and executing an innocent person," he said. 'To take the life of an innocent
person is indeed the most tragic thing that we can do."
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