Wisely, she also recommended Extra-Strength Tylenol.

Miami: No. I destination for crooks

September I, 1994

Now the rest of us know what thieves, robbers and rapists have known for a long time.

Miami is the best place in America to be a criminal. It is to hard-core felons what Disneyland is to Michael Jackson.

In a series being published this week, the Herald used computers to study the effectiveness of Dade's justice system. The results are shocking, scary and disgraceful.

Dade has the worst crime rate in the country, and does the laziest job of putting bad criminals behind bars. Unless you shoot a tourist or rob the mayor, the odds of beating the rap are hugely in your favor.

Only 15 of 100 convicted Dade felons go to state prison; the national average is 46 per 100. Out of 24 major metropolitan areas, Dade is dead last in punishing serious crime.

The customary excuse, swallowed so gullibly by us in the media, turns out to be a myth: There are beds available in Florida prisons, but Dade uses less than half its share.

State Attorney Kathy Rundle insists that crooks often serve more time when sent to county jail rather than state prison. Statistics show that's not true.

Moreover, since 1990, inmates in state prisons are serving increasingly longer stretches of their sentences (44.2 percent today, compared with 33.1 percent four years ago).

To appreciate Dade's marshmallow-softness on crime, consider that a robber arrested in neighboring Broward is three times more likely to go to prison.

What's going on? An incredible jamboree of plea-bargaining.

All big-city prosecutors and judges are snowed under by cases, but dumping them has become an art here in Dade. Of 162 felony defendants—one day's worth last spring—only 12 got prison.

Most of the rest got deals. They had the charges dropped, were put on probation, or were sent through pretrial diversion. One such program, the much-hyped Drug Court, was designed to help first offenders. It's now used as a prison-dodging scam by career crooks. One recent enrollee: a burglar with 28 prior convictions.

Much of the blame falls on prosecutors, and the judges who routinely accept (and encourage) outlandish deals for the sake of expediency.

At the State Attorney's Office, a legacy of leniency began under Janet Reno. Back in 1981, the Herald studied a week's worth of Dade felony arrests: Of 407 defendants, 38 went to prison.

Reno lobbied for a bigger budget and more prosecutors, and got both. Nevertheless, benevolent plea-bargaining has continued at a breakneck pace, sometimes with tragic consequences.

Many judges are content to help spin the revolving door, to thin their heavy calendars. The result: plea deals that gladden a mugger's heart.

It's true that Dade's justice system hasn't kept pace with the crime boom. Prosecutors and judges here labor with heavier caseloads than their counterparts in many cities.

But that doesn't account for the outrageous discrepancy in the imprisonment rate. Dade isn't merely the worst, it's the worst by a mile. Obviously there's an institutional philosophy by which prison is the least desirable of prosecutorial options.

Pretrial diversion might make sense for first timers, but it's a ridiculous approach toward a sleazebag with 28 felony raps. What else are prison cells for?

What the Dade courthouse needs is radical attitude adjustment, or an infusion of aggressive new talent. Forget who's governor or attorney general; it's prosecutors and judges who have the power and responsibility to lock up thugs.

That's a rare event in Miami, now a national playground for felons. The rules are different here.

Death penalty should be fair, certain, swift

March 27, 1997

Well, they don't call it Old Sparky for nothing.

Florida's infamous electric chair went haywire again Tuesday, and Pedro Medina caught fire.

No big deal, according to Gov. Lawton Chiles and other God-fearing leaders. They say the convicted killer was already unconscious when his hot-wired skullcap lit up like a Roman candle.

The governor cited the account of the prison's medical director, who declared:

"I saw no evidence of pain or suffering by the inmate … In my professional opinion, he died a very quick, humane death."

Thank you, Dr. Quentin Tarantino. (Did he say "humane"? Yeah, sign me up for this guy's HMO.)

But nobody put a rosier spin on the grisly mishap than Attorney General Bob Butterworth, who mused that a faulty electric chair might prove a stronger deterrent to crime.

And, while you're at it, how about a squirt of lighter fluid as they strap the guy in? Just in case he hasn't figured out the program.

That flames shot from Medina's head and the death chamber filled with smoke was politically incidental to the outcome: The man definitely died. No argument there.

But, once again, the state of Florida looks like it's being run by a bunch of dumb-ass rednecks who couldn't fix a toaster, much less an electric chair.

The last time Old Sparky malfunctioned, cop killer Jesse Tafero ignited not once, not twice but three times. That's because some genius decided to substitute a synthetic household sponge for the real thing.

(See, when a sea sponge is moistened and placed under the death cap, it absorbs some of the scorching heat generated by the 2,000-volt surges. Without a buffer, the condemned man tends to catch fire, which is an unsavory advertisement for capital punishment.)

To avert such ghoulish fiascos, many states long ago switched to lethal injections. Typically, the inmate is reclined on a table and hooked to an intravenous tube. Toxic chemicals drip into his veins, and he basically goes to sleep.

Humane it's not. The death penalty isn't supposed to be.

But injection is the most painless method, and it avoids the Gothic grotesqueries of the electric chair: the shaving and lubricating of the doomed man's scalp; the leather bonds; the death mask; the hooded executioner.

So primitive is the ritual of electrocution that even those who advocate capital punishment often are appalled when they finally witness it. I was.

There's no practical reason for keeping Old Sparky plugged in, but state legislators are a nostalgic lot. Some of those Corners would bring back public lynching, if they thought there were enough votes in it.

Polls show that most people want the death penalty to be fair, certain and swift. It's none of that now—a failure as a crime deterrent, and a stupendously expensive one. It costs millions more to execute a man than it does to lock him away forever.

But the one thing capital punishment does accomplish is this: It takes a life for a life. That's all it does—but that's often enough for those who've lost loved ones to murderers.

So the question for modern society becomes, how do we carry out this grave and ultimate act?

Answer: Here in Florida, we use a 74-year-old wooden contraption so crudely engineered that its efficiency depends on a sponge.

But don't think we're just a bunch of ignorant, unenlightened hicks down here. We didn't mean for Pedro to flame up the way he did.

It won't happen again, either. Next time, by God, the warden's bringing a fire extinguisher.