Opinion: Division over retarded disheartening

Division over retarded disheartening

By MARTIN DYCKMAN

TALLAHASSEE -- The lowest, saddest point of the legislative session came on the next-to-last day, when the House split along partisan lines over legislation to prohibit execution of the mentally retarded.

The Senate had passed it 39-0. But the chairman of the House Crime and Punishment Committee, Rep. Randy Ball, R-Mims, hated the bill. He disposed of it in the fashion of a tinhorn tyrant, by refusing to let the committee consider it.

Ball said legislators would succumb to popular pressure, so he saw his job as saving his colleagues from that. Or from whatever other better angels still appealed to them.

Ball was right about one thing. But for him, that legislation would be on Gov. Jeb Bush's desk today.

Its only chance, however, was to be attached to some other crime bill during floor debate. Rep. Curt Levine, D-Boca Raton, tried it as the House took up a Senate bill that makes it harder for a defendant to assert insanity.

Levine read a note endorsing the retardation legislation by Alberto Cardenas, the Florida Republican Party's state chairman. Cardenas had put it in writing after a chance meeting with former Sen. Frank Mann, who lobbies for ARC Florida, the association for retarded citizens. Mann knew of Cardenas' enlightened point of view from this columnist, who had received an unprompted note from Cardenas on the subject.

"I agree that we should spare retarded inmates and would support legislation to that effect," Cardenas had written.

Even so, Levine's amendment was tabled -- killed -- by a vote of 58 to 50.

That ordinarily would be regarded as an encouraging showing for any bill that hadn't been heard in committee.

But Mann was disheartened, as he and all decent persons were entitled to be, because it was the first time in 10 years of trying that the issue of protecting the retarded had become polarized by party.

Of the 58 who voted to continue sending retarded people to death row, 55 were Republicans. Only 13 bucked the House GOP leadership, which boasted that it did not lose a procedural dispute all session. That leadership, obsessed with the death penalty, takes its strategy from a staff lawyer, Don Rubottom, who maintains that any change "is an opportunity for the courts to take the death penalty and mess it up." The only Tampa Bay area Republicans who defied them were Larry Crow of Palm Harbor and John Morroni of Clearwater

Among those who did not defy them was Rep. Carol Green, a friend of Mann's from Fort Myers, where they served on a hospital board together. As one of four majority whips, Mann concedes, Green was expected to enforce party discipline, not challenge it, and her loyalty was suspect for having dissented over vouchers and other issues.

"She was nothing short of mortified when she saw me," Mann said. "She came running straight out and didn't hide from me and said, "Frank, they're breaking my arm. You can't flake one more time like you've done recently."

Never one to miss an opportunity, Mann said he asked Green to make amends by sponsoring his bill next year, and, he said, she agreed.

Green said, however, that she is committed only to filing "a bill," not necessarily his bill.

"I think we have to look at it very seriously as to looking at definitions, constitutionality and other issues," she said. "I talked with Cardenas, it is certainly an issue I'm willing to take on."

Through a spokesperson, Ball said he "remains opposed to the idea." The spokesperson added, however, that Ball "will be open to continued input from the governor's office, from prosecutors and advocates for the mentally retarded."

Gov. Jeb Bush, whose capital punishment task force recommended against blanket protection for the retarded, said subsequently that he would not sign a death warrant for someone who is retarded. But as that begs the question of who's retarded and who's not, the need persists for legislation like that which fell four votes short of surviving in the House last week.

Meanwhile, the House ideologues can expect to hear more from Cardenas, who had already conceded this year to be lost.

"I think we need to codify that next year," he said in a telephone interview last month. "I don't know if there's an appetite for it this year. The chances for success are much more realistic for it next year with the freshman class I think we'll have. Not being an election year, it will be an appropriate time. I hope it happens."

So, I suspect, do most Floridians, regardless of party.