The execution of Duane Owen is yet another stain on the State of Florida, further solidifying our place on the wrong side of history. Tonight’s execution was the fourth in an execution spree fueled solely by political ambition. Tonight we killed a human being with schizophrenia, one of the most severe and debilitating mental illnesses a person can live with. How a society treats the sick and the broken says volumes more about the society, than it says about the individual. We, the People of the State of Florida, are failing miserably.
Duane Owen’s mental illness is longstanding, well-documented, and incontrovertible. An expert that evaluated him at the time of his trial, and reviewed his records again at the time of his execution, said he remains the most mentally ill person she has evaluated in her 40-year career.
While Duane committed unspeakable acts, it is clear that these acts were the direct result of his severe mental illness. We can both grieve for his victims, Karen Slattery and Georgianna Worden, and their families, and at the same time, oppose his execution. Instead of sentencing the sick to die and letting their cases languish for decades, a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the severely mentally ill balances the need to protect society and brings finality for victims. That is the justice we should be seeking.
We must continue to tell the truth about Florida’s death penalty. We have the lowest standard in the nation to sentence people to death. Executions are set only when it is politically popular to do so. We are executing people who committed crimes as young adults. We are executing people who were sentenced to death by non-unanimous juries. We are executing people with serious mental illness. We are executing people who have been on death row for decades. We are executing the elderly.No humane society treats its citizens this way.
In his final words after sentencing Duane to death, his trial judge said, “May God have mercy on your tortured soul.” After tonight, I hope that God has mercy on ours.
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FADP is a Florida-based, state-wide organization of individuals and groups working together to end the death penalty in Florida. Our network includes dozens of state and local groups and thousands of individual Floridians, including murder victims’ family members and other survivors of violent crime, law enforcement professionals, families of the incarcerated, and death row exonerees.