Florida Lawmaker on the Death Penalty: "If it were up to me we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge and be done with it"
Florida state Rep. Brad Drake submitted a bill Tuesday that would do away with lethal injection and give death row inmates a choice between the electric chair or a firing squad. According to The Current, Drake came up with the idea for the bill while talking to a constituent recently at a DeFuniak Springs Waffle House. "'You know, they ought to just put them in the electric chair or line them up in front of a firing squad,'" the constituent said. Drake, a Republican from Eucheeanna, agreed.
While it's usually the case that states change their capital punishment laws to make the practice seem less barbaric, Drake is "so tired of being humane to inhumane people." When asked by The Current about two instances in which Old Sparky (the nickname for Florida's electrified murder chair) left one convict alive and set another's face on fire, Drake said, "In the words of Humphrey Bogart (sic), 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.'" (The "sic" is because Drake misquoted Clark Gable.)
Democratic Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel-Vasilinda, who is pushing for an end to capital punishment in Florida, said the bill "seems to be [a] little bit regressive, frankly."
But not as regressive as Drake's preferred method of execution. "There shouldn't be anything controversial about a .45-caliber bullet," he told The Current. "If it were up to me we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge and be done with it."
