Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan was distraught. The court’s harsh rules compelled him to agree to an impending execution he thought was unjust. He wrote a concurring opinion that was a cry from the heart.
“Florida will electrocute a man injured and most probably maimed psychologically while serving in his nation’s military in Vietnam and elsewhere,” he wrote. “…(T)he legal system has failed to give Larry Joe Johnson even one particle of credit for his honorable service to his country or for the injury and disability he suffered … The case for mitigation here is one of the strongest I have seen.”
Johnson, 49, was electrocuted by the state of Florida on May 8, 1993, for killing gas station attendant James Hadden in a robbery in the small North Florida town of Lee. Gov. Lawton Chiles paused the execution, but did not commute the sentence to life in prison as Kogan hoped. There have been no death row commutations in the state since 1983 when Bob Graham was governor.
Johnson’s lawyers said he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from his service in Vietnam. He was one of 24 veterans Florida has put to death since clemency fell into disuse, according to a sobering report from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
The most of any state
Florida has sentenced 117 veterans to death, the most of any state. It has executed seven in this year alone. Since 1972, it has put 24 to death. That’s almost 20% of all Florida executions.
Over the past five years, no other state has sentenced more than one veteran to death. Florida has condemned five.
Only 6% of the U.S. population has served in uniform, but 10% of death row inmates are veterans.
The disproportion may owe to many factors, but one stands out, according to the DPIC. Courts are doing a poor job of recognizing “the physical and psychological hazards” of military service.
The report cited Florida’s May 1 execution of former Army Airborne Ranger Sgt. Jeffrey Hutchinson, a veteran of two Mideast wars, who murdered his girlfriend and her three children.
Refused an insanity plea
In lamenting his death, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) posted this: “When Jeff returned home, his family watched helplessly as he struggled with memory problems, terrifying hallucinations, vomiting blood, paranoid delusions and severe mood swings — all indicators of Gulf War Illness. He became consumed by the belief that he was being surveilled because of ‘military secrets,’ including the devastating effects of his service. His symptoms were minimized, his suffering was ignored, and he was turned away from treatment by the institutions designed to protect him.”
He refused to let his defense plead insanity. He died insisting the government had framed him for the murders.
“The devastating murders for which Jeff was convicted do not erase the sacrifices he made for our nation. The blood of those children and their mother is on our hands too. We failed them all. And that failure did not have to end in more death, and more victims,” FADP said.
The toll of veterans is stark evidence of how every Florida governor since Graham has forsaken his moral obligation to temper justice with mercy. Life in prison without parole, the alternative to execution, protects the public no less than executions do, without the burden of taking more lives.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has tacitly admitted that his current spree of executions is no deterrent to more murders. In recent remarks in Jacksonville, as reported by the News Service of Florida, he said the death penalty could be a “strong deterrent” if it could be carried out faster — which means it isn’t a deterrent now.
A dubious new record
The 25 people DeSantis has executed so far, on track to break the all-time Florida record of 35 set by Gov. Spessard Holland in the 1940s, averaged 30 years each on death row; one spent 42. The first 25 put to death after Florida reimposed the death penalty in 1972 waited an average of 8.72 years to die. The delays grew as death row expanded.
Florida’s murder rate had actually risen once executions resumed. Crime rates reflect many factors, including youth, age and the economy.
It seems savage to keep people locked in cages for decades, no matter what they have done, while the legal system toils over their appeals only to put them to death at the end of it. But as the Supreme Court has said, “Death is different.” Executions will never come swiftly again, and shouldn’t.
Among the beneficial products of Florida’s prolonged appeals are 30 exonerations — proven innocence — of people on death row.
The irony that DeSantis fails to see is that the appeals of murder convictions would conclude swiftly if death were not at issue, and the public would be no less safe.
DeSantis said his role in signing death warrants is to “be sure that the person’s guilty.” As he put it: “If I honestly thought somebody wasn’t, I would not pull the trigger on it.”
That showed his misunderstanding of clemency throughout history, and it matters, because the Florida Supreme Court no longer reviews death sentences for proportionality or fairness.
Clemency is not only about sparing the wrongfully convicted. It also means tempering justice with mercy. Without mercy, there is no justice.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
