THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 26, 1995 TAG: 9504260032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
HOW IS IT that one man, sentenced to die for the rape and murder of a child, can languish for 20 years on death row while another - given the same sentence for fatally stabbing a career criminal during a drunken fight - is executed after only six years?
How does a multiple killer manage to elude the death penalty altogether while a first-time murderer is herded to the electric chair from the moment of arrest?
Why does it cost a state millions of dollars and 10 years to execute just one person?
The origins of these and other mysteries of the modern-day death penalty are unraveled and examined in ``Among the Lowest of the Dead: The Culture of Death Row'' (Times Books/Random House, 469 pp., $25), David Von Drehle's concise and fascinating study of the inmates, lawyers, judges, politicians and zealots who are the chess pieces of Florida's capital punishment system.
In clear and often beautiful prose, Von Drehle maps out the legal and social evolution of Florida's death penalty, a microcosm of how capital punishment has come to be practiced in all the states with active death penalty statutes.
A former Miami Herald reporter, who now edits art stories for The Washington Post, Von Drehle has written a book remarkably free of hype and moralizing. His tone is dispassionate and matter-of-fact, his research impeccable. He measures the inmates of Florida's death row with the same cold eye he casts on the system designed to deal with them. To him, they are neither martyrs nor monsters; merely ``weak and badly flawed people.''
Von Drehle's subject, the state of Florida, was the first to draft a new death penalty law after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that capital punishment, as previously practiced, was racist, arbitrary and capricious. The court outlawed the death penalty as it existed and challenged the states to come up with a constitutional way to administer it. Florida took up the challenge.
The resultant statute, upheld by the Supreme Court in 1976, promised several layers of review in each capital case. Other states followed suit, looking to Florida for direction and advice. In 1979, Florida's new death penalty claimed its first victim: John Arthur Spenkelink.
A convicted robber and prison escapee who had killed a man of similar background during a drunken fight in a motel room, Spenkelink turned down a prosecutor's offer to plead guilty to second-degree murder and took a jury on a first-degree charge instead. Being white, he was a good political choice for a first execution. Florida wanted to show that its death penalty was no longer racist.
In 1978, the year then-Florida Gov. Bob Graham signed Spenkelink's death warrant, there were 130 men on the state's death row. Two years later, there were 300, and the Florida Supreme Court was spending 40 percent of its time and resources to review their cases ``while the rest of the state's legal business languished.''
``The law promised heightened scrutiny in capital cases,'' writes Von Drehle. ``The law promised to weigh every aspect of a defendant's crime and character. The law was staggering under the weight of its promises.''
Florida's high court staggered, too. In ruling after ruling, its justices began to contradict themselves. In one case, they carved out exceptions to their own rulings to apply to only one defendant. In another, they reviewed a case seven times. Two of those times, they agreed with the trial judge that the man should die. Four of those times, they expressed doubts.
On its seventh review of Doug McCray's case, the Florida Supreme Court reversed his death sentence and imposed a life sentence. The process had taken 17 years.
But long years of review, Von Drehle demonstrates, have not resulted in any particular kind of justice. Inmates with substantial evidence of innocence have been put to death. Others, who have committed horrific crimes, have escaped it. Even the prosecutor who hounded the courts to execute Spenkelink has changed his mind about the system.
``I look at the guys who avoid the death penalty,'' Von Drehle quotes him as saying, ``and I look back at Spenkelink and I say, `This system is crazy.' '' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
David Von Drehle reports on Florida's costly capital punishment
system.
by CNB