WILL FLORIDA EXECUTE AN INNOCENT MAN

The headline in the NY Times Op Ed here is whether Florida will kill  an innocent man? 
The dirty truth is that in almost everyway possible, Florida has already killed James Dailey, 72, who has been on death row since 1987. It's a life wasted by a legal system that has only a passing familiarity with justice, and no real desire for fairness. 

By now we are weary of reading the same old story, over and over, each innocent life wasted over a case with some different twists for each injustice. In James Dailey's case it was the brutal murder of Shelly Boggio a teenager at the time. The killing was front page news in the community surrounding Tampa. The investigation centered on Jack Pearcy, a man with a violent history towards women, who admitted stabbing (but not killing) Ms. Boggio.  Pearcy was convicted but the jury did not recommend death, and that in turn, was something the prosecution could not live with. So they went after Dailey- Pearcy's roommate. And to get Dailey, they needed one of the most notorious jail house snitches in the sordid history of Florida's use of such scum- Paul Skalnik. 

Skalnik had a long history of crimes, including sexual assaults on children. He was a con man, a liar, a thief, a predator, and a jail house snitch that sent four men to death row. It would be comic if it wasn't tragic that when Skalnik finally accused prosecutors of lying and coaching him on his testimony- including his repeated testimony that he wasn't be rewarded for his testimony- when in Dailey's case he was released on a rape charge five days later- prosecutors responded that Skalnik was lying about them- but otherwise testified truthfully. 

As a stay expires, the governor has expressed an eager desire to sign the death warrant for James Dailey despite a second affidavit from Jack Pearcy that he and he alone killed Shelly Boggio. 

The State of Florida has already wasted thirty-two years of James Dailey's life. Thirty-two years in a death row cell as an innocent man watching his life slowly drip away day by day. And now the State wants its final pound of flesh from a Vietnam War Veteran who is innocent. 

Happy New Years. 

THE NEW DEATH STAR

In early 2016 the rebel alliance scored it's biggest victory yet, knocking out the death star of the evil Sith Lord Darth Scott (R-Florida). 

Darth Scott has re-convened the Galatic Senate to rebuild his machinery of death.
"There is no civility. Only Politics." Palpatine. *

Here's what we know about the status of the death penalty in Florida: Legislators in Tallahassee are rushing...rushing to re-enact the death penalty. They want to do it in less than a month. 

It's taken six months for the remodeling to begin on the El Chapo Cafe in the Justice Building. But law makers in Florida are going to rebuild a death penalty statute in less than 30 days, excluding work not done on Sunday, the Sabbath,  and on days legislators are hung over from too much wine provided by lobbyists during  assignations with their mistresses. 

In Florida we take more care with building the Cafes that serve us cafe con leche, than we do with creating laws to kill people. 

Today, as you  read this blog, children in Florida are waking up hungry. They and their families don't have health insurance. On their way to school, children are ducking stray bullets as gun violence continues its assault on our world (sad fact- more Americans are killed every year by a gun than died in the entire Vietnam war; more Americans are killed by guns in 45 days than died on D-Day). Children are attending under-funded schools while their parents work two and three minimum wage jobs to pay the bills. 

But the legislature is going to make damn sure that if anyone in this family struggling for daily survival is killed by someone with a gun, well then "dam gummit- we are going to spend the next thirty years and several million dollars to execute that son-of-a-bitch and let that family know we care about them." (poignant pause while the legislator shifts the bible from one hand to the other, scratches themselves under their overalls, and uses a spittoon.) 

This is madness.  "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results."  Boba Fett.  Or maybe it was Sy Gaer. 

If we have a limited and fixed sum of money to devote to a problem in society like murder. And we know that most murders are committed with firearms. We have two choices to spend that money: 1) on removing the instrumentality that is causing the murder or 2) punishing the person who committed the crime after the fact. 

Wait! "Guns don't kill people. Liberal, Muslim ISIS members invited into this county by Obama kill people." We almost forgot. 

We don't stop murder. As a god fearing christian society built on following the commandments of the bible we are going punish those that offend the lord and the laws of decent society. 
("Vengeance is mine and I will repay sayeth the lord" Romans 12:19). Well, ignore that part of the bible and focus on the part that commands a society to spend several million dollars to strap a person to a gurney and stick a needle in their arm so long as they have intelligence equal to or above mildly impaired.  Put another more crude way- using outdated language- we will execute the retarded so long as they are just mildly retarded. 

And so, as myriads of inspectors parade through the El Chapo cafe (move that chair away from the window- (fire code) move that freezer another six inches away from the wall and the mouse droppings (health code) ) our representatives are quickly pecking away at their typewriters writing laws so as to make sure not one person in Florida evades the new death star. Not one.  

This is madness. 
See You In Court. 


*Sheev Palpatine was either the senator from Naboo and secretly a Dark Lord of the Sith, or a republican state legislator from Two Egg Florida dedicated to the proposition than any decent god fearing society must have the death penalty.