Requiem of a Con: Robert Sullivan's Letters to Nancy Picthall From Death Row
1991; Volume: 3; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.18192/jpp.v3i1-2.5572
ISSN0838-164X
AutoresLaurence Armand French, Nancy Picthall-French,
Tópico(s)Latin American and Latino Studies
ResumoIn a narrow 5 to 4 decision, the United States Supreme Court (USSC) held in 1972 that the imposition of the death penalty was conducted in an arbitrary and capricious way and, therefore, constituted cruel and unusual punishment (Furman v. Georgia, 1972).While this action effectively cleared the nation's prisons of their death row population, public sentiment for capital punishment, much of it fostered by the political turbulence and social anomie of the 1960s and 1970s led to a renewed interest in the death penalty.Thus, in 1976 the USSC again sanctioned the death penalty.Now the trial process involves two stages: (1) the regular petite (adversarial) trial process, and (2) a second hearing to review possible factors which may have influenced the condemned individual's behaviour relevant to the commission of a capital crime.With this new 'objective' method of adjudication in place, the wheels of the execution process began to creep forward following a ten-year moratorium on legal executions between 1966 and 1976.The first execution involved a volunteer-Gary Gilmore -who was executed on January 17, 1977 by a Utah firing squad.John Spenkelink, the first unwilling prisoner to be executed, met his death atop "Old Sparky", the Florida electric chair, on May 25, 1979.Robert A. 'Sully' Sullivan followed Spenkelink to the electric chair on November 30, 1983, making Florida the first state to host consecutive executions since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States.Sullivan was the eighth execution overall.He also held the dubious distinction of having served on death row longer than anyone.Even a rare personal plea for clemency from
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