Aramis Ayala, the first black female state attorney, just 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. But the problem is not the death penalty itself. The problem is always the process that takes us to that place where juries convict because witnesses or police officers intentionally lie, where evidence is misplaced or hidden from the defense, where defendant’s lawyers are incompetent. What we need in America is a new and additional standard, a different burden of proof in death penalty cases. Something that only allows the death penalty to be invoked when there is absolutely no doubt of guilt. (A homicide caught on camera, for example, or a murder where the guilty party is seen committing the crime and apprehended by bystanders who were on the scene.)
It is true that Florida’s death penalty system is historically flawed, but the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed it and made clear what was constitutionally wrong. The high court said the problem with the state statute was that it allowed a judge to unilaterally decide whether or not to impose the death penalty. Juries, the court said, had to make that call.
So Florida lawmakers got together and decided to change the law and allow 10 of 12 jurors to make the call. The Florida Supreme Court, taking the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision a little more seriously, told Florida lawmakers they had missed the mark. All 12 jurors, the state court said, must agree that the death penalty should be invoked.
However, in neither case did the high courts rule that the death penalty itself was unconstitutional. The problem, instead, was with the process. It is the process that results in the historical disproportionate execution of poor, minority men than anyone else. Ayala, in making her announcement not to seek the death penalty in any case, may have violated a cardinal rule of engagement: pick your battles.
Why such a public announcement? I cringed when I hear it. Voters took to the polls to elect her almost overwhelmingly because we (yes “we”) believed she would be fair and even-handed in her approach to justice. A large number of the people who voted for her, however, do believe in the death penalty, and may not have voted for her if they knew she did not.
Perhaps more importantly, though, is that an Aramis Ayala fully engaged in making the changes she did talk about– correcting the imbalances in hiring practices, improving the upward mobility of Assistant State Attorneys, making sure her office spends its budget in a way that reflects its understanding that black and minority businesses exist, that police who use unreasonable and excessive force are prosecuted– is fully engaged.
If she didn’t want to seek the death penalty in the case of Markeith Loyd– or any other case, for that matter– we would expect her to find a reason not to seek his death, based on the requirements (or loopholes) in the law, rather than her personal sense of morality. Because what she believes is right may differ from what another prosecutor believes is right– and isn’t that the real problem with the law? Two people charged with the exact same offense get widely different sentences because one prosecutor presses for the maximum and another thinks the minimum is fine.
Making her personal morality the issue instead of what the law allows will make her vulnerable as a prosecutor, and damage her credibility as a person who swore to uphold the law as is it, and not the way she wants it to be.
I personally like Aramis Ayala. I interviewed her before the election, and remain convinced she’ll be a great state attorney. But there’s a big difference between Florida and New York, or Illinois, or California. This announcement is going to ignite a consuming fire down here that will not easily be put out. 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. I wish she could take it all back. ‘Cause this is going to end up being one huge energy-draining distraction.
In the meantime, little black girls continue to go missing and human trafficking rages on.
