John Errol Ferguson
This past Monday, August 5, 2013, the state of Florida executed 65-year-old John Errol Ferguson after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his attorneys’ final request for a stay like the one the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had granted the previous October.
The granting of that stay had been based on the claim that Ferguson was mentally ill to the point that execution would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Everything about the case was a tragedy, including Ferguson’s death by lethal injection, but not because it happened.
Because of when it happened.
Ferguson was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering six people during a home invasion robbery in Carol City, Florida. That crime occurred in July 1977, almost exactly 36 years before his execution. He wasn’t arrested until April of the following year, during which time he killed a 17-year-old couple during another home invasion robbery. In that case, he also raped the female victim before killing her. He was sentenced to death in both sets of murders.
Now, it may very well be true that by the time of his execution, John Ferguson was mentally ill, perhaps irredeemably crazy. Most “normal” people would be mentally ill after spending three decades on death row.
But there is no evidence he was insane – the legal threshold – when he committed his hideous crimes. Rather, they were planned and cruel, and he had his wits sufficiently about him to evade the law long enough to repeat his modus operandi.
So the real tragedy is that this sentence took so long to be carried out, during which time the victims’ families were repeatedly re-victimized. It doesn’t take 30 years to exhaust reasonable legal safeguards or determine to the extent that is humanly possible whether there is a case to be made for “actual innocence.”
Had John Errol Ferguson’s death sentence been carried out in a reasonable and timely matter, we wouldn’t have to be arguing about mental illness or cruel and unusual punishment.
And the family members of the eight innocent victims who came to witness the execution would not have had to wait so long to see justice done.
It’s ridiculous how long it takes to execute someone, but then you already know that. I can’t believe they have any luck finding attorneys to handle their appeals, but I do know there’s a whole network out there supporting appeal efforts. I hope forensics reaches the stage appeals are superfluous.