The Gainesville Sun has a series of articles on the Florida death penalty today. Here are the statistics, year by year. Here are the stats on current death row inmates. Here are the facts about Florida's death row.

Virginia Lazarerle is the only woman inmate on Florida's death row. She continues to proclaim her innocence.

In Stacking the Deck, the Gainesville Sun editorializes that if Florida insists on keeping the death penalty, it needs to make sure that defendants get adequate lawyers. Commenting on last week's Supreme Court decision granting a new trial to a death row inmate because of ineffective assistance of counsel, the paper writes:

The court's ruling is an important one in that it will oblige lower courts to give more scrutiny to the quality of a death row inmate's defense. "We know that the death penalty is generally not reserved for the prisoners who commit the worst crimes, but rather for those with the worst lawyers," says Bonowitz. "Maybe this ruling will change that a little bit."

Hopefully, it will also prompt Gov. Jeb Bush to reconsider his "cost-saving" plan to begin firing the state-employed lawyers who now handle capital appeals in favor of turning that work over to private attorneys. Death penalty cases are complicated matters that require considerable expertise and experience. The notion of subcontracting that work out in piecemeal fashion to private lawyers who may or may not specialize in death penalty case law is truly penny wise-pound foolish public policy.