... Since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the resumption of the death penalty in 1976, Florida has reversed the convictions of 20 Death Row inmates, more than any other state in the nation... Alabama, Georgia and Florida, meanwhile, are following the lead of Texas in pushing for speedier executions. "It's a schizophrenic time," said Semel, whose group has pushed since 1997 for a national freeze on executions... Mike Radelet, a University of Florida sociologist who has spent 20 years studying the death penalty, attributes the North-South divide to a historic Southern preference for executions, dating to the Civil War...One of the most famous of Florida's wrongful conviction cases was that of Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, who spent 12 years on Death Row for the slayings of two gas-station attendants...
Florida has by far the largest number of Death Row cases where an inmate was granted a new trial either because prosecutors withheld evidence suggesting innocence or because they knowingly used false evidence, according to Tribune research...In part because of such problems, Florida's reversal rate of Death Row convictions on direct appeal, a first appeal based solely on evidence already presented in court, averages almost 50 percent, according to the American Bar Association.
