By Jackie Hallifax
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A plan to keep Florida's 74-year-old electric chair in use despite a foot-long flame that erupted during the last electrocution
won its first committee approval Tuesday in the House.
"If we were to change our mode of execution, it would cause additional appeals, additional delays,"
Rep. Victor Crist, R-Temple Terrace, said before the 7-2 vote by the House Crime & Punishment Committee.

The legislation (CS-HB 3033) spells out that execution in Florida will be by electrocution unless the courts rule it unconstitutional.
If so, execution would be by lethal injection. If lethal injection is barred, execution would be by any lawful method.

The bill also spells out that no death sentence is to be commuted because a method of execution is found invalid.
Florida has some 380 killers on death row.

The state Supreme Court upheld use of the electric chair by a 4-3 vote last fall but five of the justices urged lawmakers to consider an alternative
method of execution to avoid "a constitutional train wreck" if the chair is ever barred.
A similar appeal is now pending before a federal judge in Tallahassee.
After the court ruling from Florida's high court, Gov. Lawton Chiles scheduled four executions for an eight-day period in late March,
a few weeks after the Legislature begins its annual two-month session. At the time, Chiles urged lawmakers to consider the court's recommendation.
The full Senate passed legislation similar to the House bill during a special legislative session on education in November.
House leaders, however, said
they would wait until this year to take up the issue.
A daughter of Judi Buenoano, scheduled to go to the chair March 30, testified before the committee in favor of lethal injection.
"We need to get up with the times," said Jennifer Hawkins of Navarre "You know, other states . . . give their prisoners the choice of which way they
need to die. And I think that choice needs to be given here."
Hawkins said even if electrocution was painless she didn't want to bury her mother's body scarred by electrical burns.
"Even in the normal cases, you still have burning on the head, around the arms, all their facial hair and everything else," she said.
The legislation approved Tuesday was sponsored by Rep. Tracy Stafford, who originally proposed a lethal injection bill.
Stafford, D-Wilton Manors, said he wanted to preserve the death penalty and prevent death sentences from being reduced to prison terms if the electric
chair is found to be unconstitutional.

The legislation goes next to the House Governmental Operations Committee.
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Posted at 11:19 p.m. EST Tuesday, February 3, 1998

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