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Witness to an Execution

By Steve Hall

Paul Flemming's latest Capital Ideas column in the Tallahassee Democrat is, "Death, politics mix with execution."The state of Florida, on behalf of me and you, executed John Richard Marek on Wednesday for the 1983 murder of Adela Marie Simmons.He was the fourth condemned man executed under a death warrant signed by Gov. Charlie Crist, and it was the 68th execution in Florida since 1979.There are 389 men and one woman on Florida's Death Row, waiting for the state to mete out its court-sanctioned, publicly supported justice. If current averages hold, each will spend more than 12 years on Death Row before the sentence is carried out.Marek was executed 26 years after his crime.I've witnessed two executions. Neither disturbed me as specific events ? I was taken only by the extreme efforts to make the executions palatable to observers; the antiseptic protocol followed to deliver a series of drugs, only a third of which actually kill...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on August 21, 2009 (boomark / email).