Gov. Ron DeSantis needs only to sign his name, which he does about once every other week, to accelerate Florida’s flawed machinery of death.
For others, there’s much work and little time to do it.
Before Florida State Prison carries out an execution, the inmate gets one last appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.
DeSantis signed a warrant last Friday to execute Norman Grim, 65, for murdering a neighbor in Santa Rosa County 27 years ago.
By prearrangement with the prison, DeSantis told the court, Grim is to die Oct. 28. His would be the 15th execution this year, at a pace of two a month, continuing to erase records dating back a century.
Very tight deadlines
In a practiced routine, the court immediately set tight deadlines for attorneys, the first on Oct. 10 to complete any pending appeal in the court that sentenced Grim and for Grim’s lawyers to file a notice of appeal. Their initial brief would be due Oct. 13.
Normally, that might be enough time, if barely.
Not this time. Grim had no lawyer. Attorney General James Uthmeier, who has been choosing the prisoners to be executed, knew it. His office had been trying to get the trial court to appoint some.
DeSantis should reprieve Grim and postpone the execution long enough for the new lawyers to familiarize themselves with the long case record and prepare proper pleadings. If he won’t, the court should.
After 27 years, what’s the rush?
Review the details
DeSantis should consider commuting the sentence to life without parole. There was evidence of serious mental issues with Grim that jurors never heard because Grim would not allow it. According to court records, Grim declared he would rather die than spend life in prison.
When Uthmeier sent Grim’s death warrant to the court, he also filed an emergency motion to have the court appoint lawyers for Grim. Federal courts are unwilling to let anyone die without benefit of counsel.
Uthmeier’s motion, which the court was expected to grant, recommended that it appoint attorneys from the office of the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel for the region based at Tallahassee. It’s one of three state offices that provide post-conviction death penalty appeals.
After upholding Grim’s sentence on direct appeal, the court appointed CCCR North to represent him. But the Legislature abolished that office, providing for appointments from a list of volunteer lawyers.
A gap in representation
Raoul Cantero III, a Supreme Court justice at the time, was sharply critical of how some of them prepared their cases, and the Legislature eventually restored CCCR North. But Grim’s volunteer counsel retired without asking the trial court to replace him, and he’s no longer eligible to practice law in Florida.
Typically, a condemned prisoner’s CCCR lawyers are familiar with the record and have recently argued and lost in the trial court. In Grim’s case, as Uthmeier knew, there was no such bid in the trial court, so there are no lawyers up to speed on Grim’s behalf.
According to his own filing, Uthmeier asked the trial court on March 10 to appoint CCCR North to represent Grim. He renewed the motion last Thursday, one day before DeSantis would be signing the death warrant on Uthmeier’s advice.
The court’s judicial assistant responded by scheduling a hearing for Wednesday, Oct. 1. Uthmeier preempted that by asking the Supreme Court to appoint CCCR North directly.
“The status of Grim’s state postconviction counsel needs to be finally settled by this Court instead of argued about below while an active warrant is pending and an execution is scheduled for next month,” Uthmeier told the court.
That raises some important questions.
Why did Uthmeier initiate a death warrant for a prisoner he knew was unrepresented? Why did he wait until the day before the governor would sign it to renew his motion to the trial court? Why are he and DeSantis staging executions with so little time for the condemned prisoners’ lawyers to respond? Why is DeSantis so relentlessly adding to such an appalling record?
All this is being done in the name of the people of the great state of Florida. None of us should be proud of it.
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.
