A heated debate now exists in Florida as to whether using the electric chair to execute convicted murderers constitutes cruel and unusual punishment banned by the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Soon the U. S. Supreme Court will make a decision on whether the recent 4-3 decision of the Florida Superme Court, holding that the electric chair's use as a device for execution for capital crimes is not cruel and unusual punishment, was correct. Only 4 states, Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Nebraska, still use the electric chair as the exclusive means of execution. However, how the state kills murderers begs the issue of the efficacy of meting out the punishment of death as opposed to lengthy incarceration.

In the U.S., twelve states and the District of Columbia, have no capital punishment. Their ratio of murders per 100,000 people is at least equal to or better than the 38 states, including Florida, that annually sentence an average of 300 people to death.

Between 1964 and 1979, there were no capital crime executions in Florida. Yet capital crimes did not appreciably increase. Since the resumption of the death penalty in Florida in 1979, or in the last 20 years, 44 people have been put to death by the people of Florida. Currently, 372 people are incarcerated on Florida's Death Row waiting to be put to death by the state, including 25 sentenced to death in 1998 (the third highest number of capital sentences in the U.S. for that year). More than half of the condemned have been there more than 10 years and 24 of them have been there more than 20 years. If the rate of death penalty executions were to be implemented at the historical pace, without additional prisoners, it would take about 167 years to execute all of the current Death Row prisoners in Florida.

There are currently approximately 3,600 people on Death Row in the U.S. Generally, less than 80 persons are put to death in the U.S. annually. For example, in 1998, while 285 persons were sent to Death row, up from 268 sentenced to death in 1997, only 68 Death Row inmates were executed in 1998, and they were incarcerated an average of 10 years and 10 months. Despite efforts by government to hasten the appeals process, the time between sentencing and execution in 1998 was a mere three months less than the 74 inmates executed in 1997, according to the Bureau of Justice statistics. Between 1930 and 1967, there were 3,859 executions or a little more than 100 yearly, a number that may be reached in 1999. Given those numbers, if there were no more killers sentenced to death nationally, it would take up to 40 years to execute them all, before many of them died of old age in prison. However, given an additional 300 or so capital sentences annually, and a disproportionate share of those in Florida, either we have to accept the existence of a burgeoning death watch population tripling, or increasing on average the historical termination of life by the state for capital offenders by 600 percent over the next 10 years, an extremely remote possibility.

Alternatively, to decrease the time and financial burden on the state courts, prosecutors, public defenders, taxpayers and others involved in the criminal justice system, it may be better to restrict further the circumstances justifying the death penalty so that it is reserved for only the most heinous of murderers.

While blood revenge is an instinct when a loved one is murdered and mercy is rarely present in considering the offender's plight, a more realistic approach for the state, which is the instrument of the collective soul of society, is to sentence more offenders to either life without parole or a minimum of 25 years to life. Punishment is there, it is more certain, society is protected and all but the most bloodthirsty should accept such punishment of the perpetrator.