State: Lethal injection approved

Lethal injection approved

ELECTRIC CHAIR'S END?: Lawmakers approve the switch in execution methods. Appeal limits may be in jeopardy.

By JO BECKER andWILLIAM YARDLEY

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida's electric chair, the state's sole means of executing condemned murderers for the past 77 years, is virtually out of business. Nudged by a string of botched executions and threats from the U.S. Supreme Court, the state Legislature voted Thursday to make lethal injection Florida's chief method of capital punishment.

Gov. Jeb Bush is expected to quickly sign the bill into law, clearing the way for him to resume signing death warrants.

"It's a great day for the state of Florida," said House Speaker John Thrasher, R-Orange Park. "We won a great victory for victims and their families."

Executions in Florida have been on hold ever since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in October to hear arguments that Florida's use of the electric chair amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Acting in a special session, the Senate unanimously passed the bill to make lethal injection the primary method of execution. The House passed it by a 102-5 vote. Inmates will have the option of choosing electrocution under the bill.

A separate plan pushed by Bush to shorten delays between conviction and execution may be in jeopardy, however. House lawmakers Thursday didn't get the required two-thirds vote needed to ensure sweeping changes Bush sought to reduce the average stay on death row from the current 14 years to five.

The Senate easily passed its version of the appeals restrictions, but the House fell five votes short. Four Republican lawmakers could not attend because of personal emergencies and sickness, and a fifth is out of the country. So while the bill passed, backers of the proposal concede that they may not be able to force the courts to do everything they wanted.

"We don't know what the practical legal effect of passing the bill without the two-thirds vote is," said Sen. Locke Burt, a lead backer of the proposal.

Rep. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, said the failure to get two-thirds vote means that the state Supreme Court "can do whatever it wants, and I suspect they will." The court helps set the rules on appeals.

The Legislature will meet again today, and Bush hopes to avoid his first significant legislative defeat through "flips and imports" -- persuading some members to change their votes and calling absent lawmakers back to Tallahassee.

"The governor feels good about where we are right now and feels like we've made some progress," spokeswoman Liz Hirst said after the House vote. "We're confident that tomorrow we will be able to keep moving forward . . . and get the votes we need."

The 36 House Democrats who voted against the appeals plan argued that it was unconstitutional, hastily crafted and could lead to the executions of the innocent.

Democratic House Leader Les Miller of Tampa said, "The Democrats stuck together on this issue. The rumor is that some people are twisting arms, but we're trying our best to hold tight."

Bush had hoped to resolve some lawmakers' concerns about his plan by agreeing Thursday to create a task force to study whether race plays a role in death sentences. But opponents -- all Democrats -- said more study isn't needed.

"We all know the justice system is not color blind," said Miller.

The task force will also address the issue of executing the mentally retarded. Meanwhile, the Senate unanimously passed a bill Thursday that would prohibit the state from executing anyone with an IQ of 55 or less. But even senators who supported the measure acknowledged it was weak: The state currently defines the mentally retarded as people with an IQ of 69 or less, a generally accepted standard. Other states that limit executions of retarded people set the mark at 70.

"I'm unhappy with this bill," said Sen. Don Sullivan, R-Seminole. But, he said, "this is the best we've got."

It is unclear whether the House will take up the Senate's proposal on mentally retarded inmates.

Of the 38 states with capital punishment, Florida is currently one of only four that still relies solely on electrocution. The others are Georgia, Alabama and Nebraska.

Known as Old Sparky, the oaken chair and its successor have been in use since Florida passed a law authorizing death by electrocution in 1923. Local sheriffs were tired of presiding over hangings. The chair was seen as a more humane alternative to the noose.

The death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 1972. But the state resumed executions in 1979, and since then 44 people have died in the chair. Even as other states turned to lethal injection, Old Sparky remained popular among Floridians and their politicians. Office-seekers hoping to prove they were tough on crime used images of the chair in political ads.

Bush called the special session after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments that the electric chair was unconstitutional. In the past decade, two inmates have caught fire during electrocutions.

The last man executed -- Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis -- died in a bloody spectacle July 8. Bush quickly attributed it to a minor nose bleed and backed the chair. But photographs of Davis taken moments after his execution showed his face contorted and purple. Those pictures, along with new evidence suggesting that condemned inmates experienced a painful, slow-motion death, added to the calls to replace the chair.

Capital punishment supporters feared that if the state didn't turn to lethal injection, the nation's high court could leave Florida without a death penalty. That could jeopardize the sentences of the 366 inmates currently on death row.

Now, with the Legislature's action, Attorney General Bob Butterworth hopes to argue that the case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court is moot. It's a strategy that worked in California: The U.S. Supreme Court in 1996 reversed its decision to hear arguments that California's use of the gas chamber was unconstitutional after the state offered lethal injection as a choice.

Bush, however, was adamant that lawmakers address both lethal injection and limiting death penalty appeals.

Initially he had hoped to ensure passage of his appeals reform by tying it to lethal injection in the same bill. He did not agree to split them until Wednesday morning, after lawmakers assured him they had enough votes in the GOP-led House. The problem with combining the measures, according to Butterworth and others, is that the bill could have violated the Florida constitution's requirement that bills deal with only a single subject.

Times Staff Writer Sydney P. Freedberg contributed to this report.