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  • 2 hours ago
While public support for the death penalty has been steadily decreasing across the US, one state is bucking the trend. This discussion explores the reasons for the national decline, including traumatic and flawed execution methods, and examines why Florida has become the busiest death row in the country.
Transcript
00:00It's now like the busiest death row in the US. I think what's interesting about the US is that
00:05public support for the death penalty has actually been in decline since it was reinstated in the
00:0970s. And the use of it has been massively declining as well because of, as you say,
00:14there are so many issues around actually applying it. Like a lot of the information that we get out
00:18about particularly the use of lethal injection, it's very easily botched. It can be very traumatic
00:23for the people that have to carry it out, the people watching, the medical practitioners,
00:27the prison staff. It's incredibly traumatic. Like there are some awful stories of things going
00:32horribly wrong. But what's interesting is that as the application of the death penalty in the US has
00:38been in massive decline over the past few decades, Florida has become this outlier. It's now like
00:44the busiest death row in the US. You know, there's over 240 people on death row. And I think about
00:51half of them have exhausted their appeals process. And last year, Florida carried out 19 out of the
00:5823 total executions in the US. That's like, you know, it's an incredibly, it's an incredible outlier
01:03in that regard. So it's not to suggest that public opinion is so different in Florida. But it does seem
01:09as though the difference is in that high concentration of power in the governor's office.
01:13Yes.
01:14Yes.
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