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ELECTRIC CHAIR 'SICKENING, BARBARIC' : LEGISLATOR
Florida execution witness says
death penalty must be dropped
-AAP.AP SATEUiTE PICTURE Miss Carol Spenkelink, right, sister of Mr John Spenkelink, with demonstrators, outside Florida State Prison on Friday at the time of her brother's execution. Help
-AAP.AP SATEUiTE PICTURE
Miss Carol Spenkelink, right, sister of Mr John Spenkelink, with demonstrators, outside Florida State
Prison on Friday at the time of her brother's execution.
JACKSONVILLE, Florida, Sunday
(AAP-Reuter). - A Florida State legis
lator, Mr Andy Johnson, who watched a
convicted murderer, Mr John Spenkelink,
die in the electric chair, has announced
that he will introduce a Bill to end
executions in Florida.
Denouncing the electrocution of Mr
Spenkelink as sickening and barabaric, Mr
Johnson told reporters', "We sat there and saw
a man sizzled. If you leaned forward and
looked close, you could see that he sizzled
again and again".
Both supporters and opponents of the death
penalty believe that Friday's execution will
bring a wave of executions among the nearly
500 criminals under sentence of death in the
United States.
Mr Spenkelink was the first American
executed against his will in 12 years. During
that period, courts have looked favourably on
appeals against the death sentence.
Mr Johnson's Bill to end executions stands
little chance of passage through the Florida
legislature, where there is believed to be a
sizeable majority in favour of capital pun
ishment.
A former US Attorney-General, Mr
Ramsey Clark, who helped to prepare the last
of Mr Spenkelink's futile appeals, expressed
the belief that more executions will now
follow.
"I believe we will abolish the death penal
ty", Mr Clark said in Washington.
"It's a question of when and how many lives
will be lost in the meantime".
Utah's deputy Attorney-General, Mr
Michael Dreamer, said he hoped Mr
Spenkelink's death would lead to the execu
tion of all those who had legally been con
demned to that fate.
Mr Spenkelink, 30, a vagrant, argued that
he acted in self-defence when he killed a fellow
vagrant in 1973.
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Sunday (AAP
Reuter). - Capital punishment in Jamaica,
which has been suspended for the past three
years, will be restored next week.
After a review of their cases by the Privy
Council, four men - Mr Anthony Forbes, Mr
Noel Riley, Mr Clifton Irving and Mr Vincent
O'Sullivan - are to be hanged in the St
Catherine District Prison this week, informed
sources report.
There are more than 70 men on death row.
Capital punishment was suspended on
April 6, 1976, by a committee on national
security which later recommended that it be
restored.
Last January, the House of Repre
sentatives voted 24-19 to restore capital pun
ishment despite the opposition of the Minister
for Justice, Mr Rattray, and pleas from Am
nesty International.
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