Florida Governor Eliminates Innocence Commission
Florida Governor Eliminates Innocence Commission
Faced with the dubious honor of 23 death row prisoner being exonerated since 1973 and 12 exonerations via DNA evidence since 2001, the Florida Supreme Court created the Florida Innocence Commission. With the stroke of his veto pen, Governor Rick Scott eliminated the Innocence Commission in the name of saving $200,000.
The Innocence Commission was created in 2009 “to conduct a comprehensive study of the causes of wrongful conviction and of measures to prevent such convictions.” It was charged to examine wrongful convictions and advocate for reforms after “studying false eyewitness identifications, interrogation techniques, false confessions, the use of informants, the handling of forensic evidence, attorney competence and conduct, the processing of cases, and the administration of the death penalty.”
To continue the quest to end miscarriages of justice caused by wrongful convictions, the Florida Legislature appropriated $200,000 in its $70 billion budget to allow the Innocence Commission to continue its work. Scott, however, ended the work for reform of the poor record that follows Florida’s criminal justice system by vetoing the funding earmarked for the Commissions’ work in early June 2012.
That is not Scott’s first veto of legislation aimed at reforming Florida’s criminal justice system. In April, he vetoed legislation that would have moved non-violent drug offenders out of prison and into treatment programs after completing half of their sentence. That legislation passed the House and Senate by a combined vote of 152-4.
In vetoing that bill, Scott said, “Justice to victims of crime is not served when a criminal is permitted to be released early from a sentence imposed by courts.”
Scott’s rationale to eliminate the Innocence Commission is an example of the government mantra “save a penny to waste a dollar” at work. While in the short term he saved $200,000, wrongful convictions cost the state an average of $2 million per case. Seems that the economic crisis has not put an end to “tough on crime” thinking after all.
Source: nationalmemo.com
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