USA - Florida. The House passed a bill designed to accelerate executions

The House passed a bill designed to accelerate the execution of many of the 404 inmates on Florida's death row. By an 84-34 vote, the House passed HB 7083, the "Timely Justice Act of 2013" and sent it to the Senate, where a companion measure is expected to be taken up later today. Sponsored by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Shalimar, and Sen. Joe Negron, R-Palm City, the bill creates a new process that establishes a system to determine which inmates on death row have exhausted their post-conviction appeals and requires the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days, after a Supreme Court review. The execution would then have to take place within 180 days. Florida's inmates on death row wait an average of 13 years before they are executed. Among the 404 sentenced to death, 155 of them have been there for more than 20 years and 10 have been on death row for more than 35 years. Legislative analysts estimate the state spends between $326,093 and $296,032 per inmate before his or her execution. Mark Elliott, Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said: “Since Florida resumed executions in the 1970's, 24 wrongfully convicted death row prisoners have been exonerated while 75 prisoners have been executed. That's 1 exoneration for every 3 executions." "It is astonishing that the focus is on hurrying-up executions and not investigating how so many innocent people could be sent to death row and how many more are there now." Just 4 months ago, Seth Penalver became Florida's 24th exonerated death row prisoner. Florida holds the national record for sentencing the most people to death who were later, sometimes many years later, exonerated and freed due to new evidence of wrongful conviction.