John Sugg, remembered in Tampa Bay for his long stint as a Weekly Planet editor and now CL's senior group editor, writes this week about Florida's botched executions:
The entertainment is back. Yep, the fun has begun on Florida’s death row, after more than six years of mostly ho-hum executions.
As you’ll recall, Florida once boasted a squad of executioners with
skills unseen since the days of the Gestapo, maybe even Torqemada. I’m
sure the Sunshine State “fry ‘em slowly†boys helped inspire the epics
at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and that brig in South Carolina where it’s been
revealed that an American citizen was turned into a chunk of cheese by
CIA torture techniques.
But I digress. Back to Starke, Fla., one of the most aptly named
burgs in this spiral arm of the galaxy. It’s the home of Raiford prison
and Florida’s death row.
Read the entire story here.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2006.