Word: spenkelink
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...ended last week the life of John Spenkelink, 30, a wiry drifter and habitual criminal, after a frenzied week of final appeals, to the Florida Supreme Court, to the Federal Appeals Court and to the U.S. Supreme Court. He had won two brief stays, then lost them both because of pleas by Florida officials who were determined to put him to death...
Lawyers for John Spenkelink, a white drifter sentenced to death for murdering another white in a Florida motel room six years ago, tried this argument on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The court rejected it, and last month the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The Spenkelink decision is important. The Fifth Circuit covers the six Southern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas) that have 75% of all the prisoners now on death row. It means that Spenkelink has nearly exhausted all possible legal remedy, and scores of inmates in other Southern...