Orlando Sentinel

February 07 

Justices' review of death penalty met with shock

By Susan Clary

The architects of Florida's death-penalty law were caught by surprise when the U.S. Supreme Court stalled executions in the state Tuesday while the justices determine if laws here and in eight other states are unconstitutional. 

Florida and the other states affected -- Arizona, Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Montana and Nebraska -- allow a judge, rather than a jury, to decide if a criminal is put to death. 

What the justices do with a case out of Arizona potentially could affect more than 800 inmates sentenced to die. Nearly half of those convicts -- 372 -- are on Florida's death row in Starke. 

After the Supreme Court struck down executions nationwide in 1972, states began adopting new laws tailored to satisfy the court's constitutional objections to the death penalty.