EMILEE COPE DEFENDS THE DEATH PENALTY & VICTIMS’ RIGHTS

“The death penalty to me is equivalent to euthanizing an animal. They’re given peace and they won’t have to suffer anymore. Meanwhile, my father suffered horribly. I wish he could have traded places with those defendants, in the sense that he would have been given a more peaceful, painless death.”

— Emilee Cope, a victim advocate for the Edgewater Police Department whose father was kidnapped, hogtied to a bed and left to die in 2009. Keith Cope died later from complications brought on by injuries sustained as a result of the attack.

            We, the comrades of Unit 1012, thanks Emilee Cope for supporting victims’ rights and also defending the death penalty. We will not forget your father and we will give you our full support.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20160228/news/160229452

Edgewater daughter of murder victim happy with progress on death penalty

Woman who's father tortured to death happy with law's progress

  

Emilee Cope holds a picture montage of her father that she showed to jury members at the sentencing of her father's murderer. News-Journal/NIGEL COOK

EDGEWATER — When it comes to crime and capital punishment, the U.S. Supreme Court has long held that “death is different.”

Emilee Cope, 21, knows death is different. It was different for her father.

Keith Cope died a slow and excruciating death after he was hogtied to his bed for four days in Edgewater during a robbery in 2009. The killer, a former roommate named Joseph Jordan, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

(READ: How Volusia and Flagler killers got onto death row.)

The daughter’s reaction is more visceral to developments like last week's vote in a Senate committee approving requiring a 10-2 jury recommendation for death before a judge could impose a death sentence.

“It’s far more raw for me,” she said.

The Senate bill takes the state one step closer to restarting the death penalty after the U.S. Supreme Court in January struck down the Florida’s death sentencing process. The bill must still be voted on by the full Senate. The House bill has already passed. 

The Senate bill, like the one in the House, corrects the problem pointed out by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that jurors must unanimously agree on an aggravator, a factor increasing the egregious nature of the crime supporting the imposition of the death penalty. In Florida’s now-unconstitutional sentencing process, jurors did not even vote on an aggravator. The judge found the aggravator.

The Senate version was a compromise. The Senate’s original bill required a unanimous jury recommendation for death before the judge could impose death. The House version had required a 9-3 vote. They compromised on 10-2.

The bill would allow a judge to still impose life even with a death recommendation. But the judge could not override a life recommendation and impose death, something a judge could do now, even though it has not been done for a while.

The state Supreme Court is also reviewing two death-penalty cases in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling and could possibly order new sentencing hearings for at least some of the 389 inmates on Florida's death row.

The 10-2 vote is OK by Cope, who traveled to Tallahassee to speak to representatives in the House about the death penalty. She had opposed a unanimous recommendation.

“I think that a majority is still a fair vote. To make it unanimous is where the problem is,” Cope said in an interview.

But some say that by failing to require a unanimous jury recommendation for death Florida will remain an outlier state. Of the 31 states with a death penalty, only Alabama and Delaware don’t require a unanimous jury recommendation for death. Delaware’s death penalty is now under review by its state Supreme Court.

The 7th Circuit Public Defender, James Purdy, said he predicts the U.S. Supreme Court will probably overturn Florida’s death penalty again saying it must be a unanimous recommendation.

“I think that they had an opportunity to come into conformity with the rest of the country and decided not to do it, because the prosecutors association convinced them that too many people that were death eligible would not receive the penalty if it was a unanimous recommendation even though that’s the way it is in the rest of the country.”

Purdy said if jurors knew they had to reach a unanimous verdict then they would simply argue the point longer until they either agreed or were deadlocked.

Assistant Public Defender Matt Phillips, who handles death penalty cases, said he was disappointed.

“It’s still going to leave Florida as an outlier state,” Phillips said.

But 7th Circuit State Attorney R.J. Larizza said he thinks that the Legislature’s action complies with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hurst v. Florida.

“I think we’ve gone well beyond Hurst. I think there’s been compromise on both sides of the isle to get to 10 to 2 and I think it’s a good compromise,” Larizza said.

Larizza said there are death penalty cases on hold throughout the state waiting for a new death penalty process. One such case is that of Luis Toledo, the Deltona man accused of killing his wife and her two children, whose bodies have not been found. Toledo’s trial was to start in January but was delayed after the state’s death penalty process was struck down.

 The Florida Legislature is going in the right direction with the bill but it still does not go far enough, said Mark Schlakman, the senior program director at the Center for Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University.

“Florida went for the lowest common denominator which is Alabama subject to what happens in Delaware,” Schlakman said.

For Emilee Cope, her father’s death changed her career path from dentistry to psychology. It also prompted her to become a victim's advocate for the Edgewater Police Department. 

"It really does give me a unique perspective on what they are going though. And it does help me to better understand where their minds are and where their emotions are,” Cope said.

And it changed her world view.

“It makes me feel like there are evil people in this word who do deserve a death sentence. And trying to change it to require a unanimous vote makes it that much harder for families and victims to receive justice,” Cope said.