Florida's highest court indefinitely suspended the execution of two convicted killers yesterday after the US Supreme Court last month ruled that a death sentence imposed by a judge rather than a jury was unconstitutional.
"Both pending executions have been stayed," Florida Supreme Court spokesman Mr Craig Waters said. He said the stay was indefinite and the grounds for itwould be made public later.
The decision came only hours before Linroy Bottonson (62) was scheduled to die by lethal injection. Another convicted killer, Amos King (47), had been scheduled to be executed on Wednesday.
The stay effectively extends a five-month-old unofficial moratorium on carrying out death sentences in Florida. Executions were halted in Florida in January when the US Supreme Court agreed to review the role of juries in death sentences.
In June, the top US court ruled that a death sentence imposed in Arizona was unconstitutional because it had not been imposed by a jury.
Lawyers for Bottonson and King argue that the June ruling means Florida's system is unconstitutional, since life or death decisions are made by judges.
But the US Supreme Court last month, after the ruling that death sentences imposed by judges were unconstitutional, refused to hear appeals by the two inmates, and Governor Jeb Bush, a brother of the US President and a staunch advocate of the death penalty, promptly signed the two death warrants.
Lawyers for Bottonson and King requested the stay, arguing in documents presented to the court that: "Given that the Arizona scheme is unconstitutional, so is the Florida scheme." They also requested that the punishment be commuted to life sentencing.
Attorney's groups and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also had appealed to the Florida court to stay the executions while the implication of the federal decision were assessed.