FLORIDA DELAYS TWO EXECUTIONS AFTER US SUPREME COURT RULING

the Florida Supreme Court issued the indefinite stays on Monday just hours before Linroy Bottoson was to be executed in connection with the death of a woman who was robbed, held captive for 83 hours, stabbed 16 times and crushed by a car. Another inmate, Amos King, had been scheduled for execution Wednesday.
In a 6-1 order, the court set oral arguments for August 21.
The US Supreme Court ruled last month in an Arizona case that juries and not judges must decide facts needed to warrant death penalties. The court said death penalty laws in Arizona and five states were unconstitutional.
But the court was silent about similar laws in Florida and three other states where juries play limited roles but judges make the final decisions.
The court had issued stays for Bottoson and King while it was considering the Arizona case but lifted them a few days later.
Lawyers for Bottoson, King and other death row inmates argued that when the US Supreme Court lifted the stays, it did nothing more than send the issue back to the state courts to work out whether its ruling applied to Florida.
Attorneys for the state argued the high court´s lifting of the stays meant Florida law was acceptable to the court.
Abe Bonowitz, director of the Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said he was en route to the prison when he got word of the stay.
``It´s always good to be on the way to a killing and turn around,´´ he said.
There are 371 inmates on Florida´s death row.