“Is swift justice fair justice?” asked Democratic party Senator Arthenia Joyner, a Tampa attorney who voted against the bill. “We have seen cases where, years later, convicted people were exonerated,” she said. […] But Republican Senator Rob Bradley said, “this is not about guilt or innocence, it’s about timely justice.” Frivolous appeals designed only for delay are not fair to victims and their families, he said. […] “Only God can judge,” Matt Gaetz, a Republican who sponsored the bill in the House of Representatives, said last week during House debate. “But we sure can set up the meeting.”
In Floriduh, a state where fully one-quarter of death row inmates have been exonerated since the 1970s, you’d think lawmakers would want to exercise an abundance of caution. No sense in executing innocent people…RIGHT?? (Unless, of course, Republicans want to demonstrate their law and order bona fides.)
Au contraire, mon ami, for this is Floriduh, where justice may be blind…but then so are those who make the Sunshine State’s laws. This week, Floriduh’s legislature passed a bill that would raise the bar and make it more difficult to challenge a death sentence. It may not be an “express lane” to the electric chair, but Floriduh Republicans are all about swift justice…which isn’t all at the same as being all about ACCURATE justice.
It’s one thing to want to mete out the ultimate punishment. After all, if you’re a Republican, you probably still think that capital punishment deters crime (It doesn’t, but why let a little thing like the facts get in the way?). It’s quite another if you’re sitting on death row, convicted of a crime you didn’t commit. Republicans may feel (inhumanly, to be certain) that the occasional execution of an innocent person is just the cost of doing business to keep good, God-fearing, White American Christian patriots safe. Or they may not care about something that they know doesn’t impact them directly. Hey, if you’re executing someone who may be innocent, and you neither know nor care about that person…well, where’s the fire, right?
When you can say with a straight face that it’s not about guilt or innocence, you’ve ascended to a new level of monstrosity…and there really should be a parking space with your name on it waiting for you in Hell.
