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Another Warden Speaks

By standdown

"Florida must abolish flawed death penalty," is the title of Ron McAndrew's Oped from the Sunday edition of the Orlando Sentinel.  McAndrew retired after 25 years in corrections including time as a warden in the Florida state prison system."Capital punishment: them without the capital get the punishment." Those were the last words of John Spenkelink, executed 30 years ago today in Starke for murdering traveling companion Joseph Szymankiewicz. Spenkelink was the first person executed in the state, the second nationwide after a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling reinstated capital punishment. As a former Florida prison warden who carried out three electric-chair executions and shadowed five lethal-injection executions in Texas, I know that Spenkelink was correct: Most death-row inmates cannot afford experienced attorneys...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on May 26, 2009 (boomark / email).