Aramis Ayala, the first black female state attorney, just poked the sleeping bear and announced that she will not seek the death penalty in any case that her office undertakes to prosecute. What was she thinking?
On February 20, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s flawed death penalty system (requiring 10 of 12 jurors to vote in favor of the death penalty) could continue to be used as long as jurors were told that all 12 jurors– not 10– had to vote to put a convicted felon on death row.
Justice Barbara J. Pariente wrote an opinion in which she almost prophetically said that by allowing death penalty cases to continue without first requiring state lawmakers to go back and change the actual law, a whole new wave of legal issues would crop up.
Boy, was she ever right.
I have no insight into Ayala’s reasoning other than what she announced to the public, but I feel her frustration with the system. This rush to kill people for their crimes all too often becomes the focus of law enforcement efforts rather than the legally required result.
Innocent people should never die by court-ordered execution. Way too many have. Famed legal jurist Sir William Blackstone said it is “Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” Benjamin Franklin set the number at 100 guilty men. The problem is not necessarily the punishment, but the process by which the law allows an innocent person to suffer– the process that takes us to that place where juries convict because they don’t like the defendant (possible racial bias), witnesses or police officers intentionally lie, evidence is misplaced or hidden from the defense, defense counsel is simply incompetent. I hear Ayala and I get it. But . . .
It seems to me that the state attorney’s office is best suited to control that troublesome process, by focusing the assistant ASAs on the quest for truth instead of adding notches to their belts. I think Ayala made a mistake today. Mostly because she forgot the cardinal rule: pick your battles.
I cringed when I heard the public announcement because I anticipate the backlash, and I question whether or not the announcement gained her anything. She has the discretion to seek the death penalty or not anyway, so why not just use it– on a case-by-case basis? This announcement invites voters to question her oath to uphold the law. Expect a lot of push-backs, especially since Gov. Scott recently brought the Florida statute into compliance with the U.S. and Florida Supreme Courts’ requirements for constitutionality.
Ayala said (my apologies if the quote isn’t 100 percent): “After review of the new statute, under my administration, I will not be seeking the death penalty in cases we handle.”
Second-guessing anybody is dangerous, I know, but those of us who voted for Ayala did so hoping she’d be fully engaged in things like making criminals pay for their crimes, correcting the imbalances in hiring practices that have historically plagued that office, making sure her office spends its budget in a way that reflects its understanding that black and minority businesses exist, and ensuring that police who use unreasonable and excessive force are prosecuted according to the law.
I personally like Aramis Ayala. I voted for her. But maybe her purposes would have been better served if she had instead called for a state-wide moratorium on application of the death penalty until the law is changed, or until the process is fixed, or whatever she believes the problem with the process to be. That would have called attention to what’s wrong with the system, instead of calling attention to herself.
A fire has been started that’s going to be hard to put out. I don’t know who advised her on this decision but mark my words: the political fallout is going to be bad. Really bad. That’s the kind of emotional hubris the death penalty brings. This is going to end up being one huge energy-draining distraction, at a time when we ought to be focused on the process that will continue to disproportionately impact blacks in every other county in the state, and on the many children who continue to go missing and the human trafficking that rages on right here in our neck of the woods.
