Judge Milton Hirsch, fresh off a well deserved re-election, declared Florida's Death Penalty Statute (Motto: "Send em all to death row and let the fed courts sort it out on Habeas") unconstitutional.
In the milieu of the machinery of death, there are various legal reasons why Florida's death penalty statute, to use a technical legal term, sucks. See, for example, Justice Breyer's courageous dissent in Glossip v. Gross, which raises fundamental Eighth Amendment issues.
But Judge Hirsch, no legislator on the bench he, stuck to the narrow issue of the lack of the requirement of unanimity in the death penalty statute. Where only North Korea, Mars, and some counties in Alabama allow for the execution of its citizens by a non-unanimous jury verdict, Florida proudly embraces its heritage of allowing a minority of its citizens to kill a majority of defendants, as long as they are mostly minorities.
So with no further ado, and with no quotes from Guy De Maupassant, Alan Alda, Buzz Aldrin, or Disraeli, we present the Honorable Judge Milton Hirsch's strike for the humanity and dignity of our troubled state:
Strong Order, although with my limited vocabulary I needed a dictionary to understand several of the words in the Order: examples: Tautologous (page 8),
ReplyDeleteFacinorous (page 13),Grundnormen (page 15), Epistemological (page 16).
Query. Did Judge Hirsch purposefully wait until Monday to release the Order?
Monday was the first working day after the deadline to file to run for Judge. On Friday past, at 12:01 PM, Hirsch was reelected, without opposition, to another six year term. If he had released that same Order a week ago, would he have drawn opposition?
Curious to hear from the readers on that?
One other note: how does somebody completely screw up the Case Number on the most important Order Hirsch has ever penned. The case number is NOT F01-128535. It is F12-8535.
Cap Out .....
ReplyDeleteof course he waited till after the filing deadline. Milt has many qualities but stupidity isn't one of them
How about this - if somebody kills your child, do you want to pay to feed and house them. The death penalty may need to be re-written, but I pray it never goes away. Out of the 335 million or so people in this country, some need to be taken out back and shot. Stop wasting resources on these losers and pull the switch. Child rapists, terrorists, heinous murderers deserve to die. They showed no compassion for their victims and will get no compassion from me.
ReplyDeleteHirsch obviously waited until his seat was secure for another cycle before dropping this. Any person with at least a room temperature IQ would have done the same.
ReplyDeleteHe's totally right on the merits. We need unanimity to convict someone of stealing a candybar, but a little bit less is fine if we're just talking about strapping someone to a gurney and killing them. Yeah, ok Tallahassee.
Courage.
ReplyDeleteThe Dos Equis Man said: "I don't agree with Milt Hirsch often. But when I do, it is regarding the death penalty."
ReplyDeleteFire up old sparky
ReplyDeleteCaptain, do you just ask stupid questions to start a dialogue or do you actually want the input of readers? Are you thinking someone is going to say "gee, I don't think there's a coincidence that the filing deadline was Friday and he filed the order FINDING THE DEATH PENALTY UNCONSTITUTIONAL Monday?"
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you ask the readers if they think when the sun sets it gets dark?
Unless the 3rd DCA or the Florida Supreme Court find a way to avoid the invocation of the United States Constitution, and decide this issue solely on state constitutional grounds, this order has no hope of surviving. Maybe Milt should have read Michigan v. Long and Virginia v. Moore. If he had, and had framed his order differently (invoking the due process clause of the state constitution as the Florida Supreme Court did two weeks ago in State v. McAdams), it might have viability.
ReplyDeleteNice try Milt. Wait until the 3rd DCA sees my brief opposing your order. You and all of you defendant's rights friends are going down.
ReplyDeleteIt don't matter. Keep old sparky kicking and killin
ReplyDeleteHirsch loves getting reversed.
ReplyDeleteKnowing him or knowing his ego, really, that order had been in the works since Hurst came out. I'd bet even before Hurst came out. He's smart but waiting until after the deadline makes him a coward.