Florida editorial roundup
Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:
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Dec. 23
Tampa Bay Times on racial disparities in drug sentences:
Racial disparities pervade Florida's justice system, and the war on drugs is no exception. A Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigation found black defendants account for a disproportionate share of drug convictions and are given longer jail sentences than whites in similar circumstances. The disparity exists in drug treatment too, with blacks afforded far less access to rehabilitation programs. As the state devotes more resources to helping rather than jailing addicts, it should recognize this inequality and not leave African-Americans behind.
The Herald-Tribune compiled information from multiple state databases and identified trends in drug cases. Most significantly, blacks make up 17 percent of Florida's population but account for 46 percent of felony drug convictions. Laws enacted during the crack cocaine epidemic that established drug-free zones around schools, churches and public housing continue to be in force - and continue to perpetuate racial imbalances. Dealing drugs in those zones, which commonly blanket minority neighborhoods, often brings enhanced prison sentences. The Herald-Tribune found that black defendants are nearly three times more likely to face a drug-free zone sentence enhancement and account for two-thirds of those convictions statewide. The newspaper's series, "One War. Two Races," found these disparities exist even between defendants with similar criminal histories caught committing the same crimes. The only difference was race.
Take the comparison of two men caught selling drugs in north Tampa. A white man sold oxycodone pain pills to a confidential informant from his apartment near USF. He had a long history of addiction and had committed other crimes to feed his habit. Even though the drug sale took place near a church, prosecutors did not seek a longer sentence. The man pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation. In the other case, a black man sold $100 of crack cocaine to an undercover deputy. Deputies alleged the sale took place near a church, but that was inaccurate. Still, prosecutors sought the enhancement and the black defendant was sentenced to 20 months in prison. Such imbalances show up in statistics from every judicial circuit in Florida, making clear that racial bias - both in the laws and in the way the laws are applied - is unjustly affecting African-Americans.
Drug defendants in Florida don't necessarily head straight to prison. Drug courts, which allow low-level users to get treatment while meeting rigorous conditions, are in greater use. The opioid crisis also has created more state-subsidized inpatient rehab beds. But those options are less accessible to black defendants. While blacks made up 40 percent of felony drug convictions, less than a quarter were accepted in drug court. And though Florida has added 3,000 residential rehab beds since 2004, black defendants are getting fewer of them. That's due in part to the startling rise in opioids, which are used overwhelmingly by whites and killed nearly 6,000 people in Florida last year. But unconscious bias is also surely playing a role in the court system, where a white pain pill addict may be viewed as someone who has simply lost his or her way while a black crack user may seem beyond saving.
To correct this fundamental unfairness, police, prosecutors and judges should acknowledge the Herald-Tribune's findings and take them to heart. To his credit, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren is already taking steps to correct such sentencing disparities, including expanding the use of diversion programs. In the coming legislative session, lawmakers also will consider bills relaxing minimum mandatory drug sentences, which have kept too many low-level drug offenders locked up for too long.
There is no justification for allowing Florida's courts to systematically treat one racial group differently from another. As the state works to evolve past the punitive - and ineffective - approach of focusing on locking up addicts, restoring fairness and banishing discrimination should be at the heart of those efforts.
Online: http://www.tampabay.com/
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Dec. 26
The Miami Herald on statistics regarding Haitians with HIV/AIDS:
And the hits just keep on coming. And by hits we mean the insults, negative stereotypes and willful ignorance in which the Trump administration continues to traffic.
Last week, the New York Times reported that, in June, President Trump said that thousands of Haitians, apparently bound for the United States, "all have AIDS."
Given the decline of the disease that was unfairly tied to the people of Haiti three decades ago, Trump is wrong, as he has been before.
Here are the facts about Haitians and AIDS: According to UNAIDS, an estimated 150,000 adults on the island are living with HIV/AIDS. And there were 7,900 new cases last year. In all, about 2 percent of Haiti's people have HIV/AIDS. Haiti has a population of about 10.8 million.
The incidence of HIV/AIDS in Haiti remains troubling. But the numbers are also encouraging, for they represent a decline in the prevalence of a disease that decades ago ravaged and killed thousands, but unfairly stigmatized an entire immigrant population in South Florida and elsewhere.
Education and health care initiatives deserve credit. So, too, do U.S. funding specifically tied to eliminating AIDS and the work of GHESKIO, the largest AIDS clinic in the Caribbean. According to UNAIDS, HIV cases and AIDS-related deaths in Haiti have fallen by about 25 percent since 2010, when the earthquake interrupted some efforts.
The administration has vehemently denied that Trump insulted Haitians. Forgive us for having doubts. The offensive comments sound ever so Trumpian, overblown and, when stated publicly, calculated to strike fear in the hearts of his ardent - and fact averse - supporters:
Mexico is "sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people."
And, "As has been stated continuously in the press, people are pouring across our borders unabated. Public reports routinely state great amounts of crime are being committed by illegal immigrants."
Crime, indeed, is something to decry. Still, Trump clearly finds it easier - and a winning strategy, unfortunately - to make blanket, dehumanizing statements about some foreigners.
With his loaded accusation, Trump is harking back to 1983 and the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when the Center for Disease Control announced that there were four major risk groups for AIDS in the United States - homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin users and Haitians.
The CDC acknowledged that each of the four groups contained many individuals who were not at risk for AIDS. However, those exceptions meant little to the public. And Haitians were the only group listed based on nationality rather than specific behavioral factors.
In 1985, Haitians, as a whole, were removed from the CDC's report. But the damage was done, taking decades to undo.
But Trump saw fit to remind us. To what end?
As the president's concern about AIDS in Haiti appears to go no deeper than a wrong-headed insult, it's no surprise that his proposed federal budget cuts $222 million from the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB & Malaria.
Just another uninformed insult from a tone-deaf administration. Again, only the facts can undo the damage it continues to do.
Online: http://www.miamiherald.com/
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Dec. 22
Orlando Sentinel on the governor's attempts to appoint successors to several retiring state Supreme Court justices whose terms expire on the same day as his:
Term-limited Gov. Rick Scott won't be moving out of the governor's mansion for another 13 months, but he's already pushing Florida toward a constitutional crisis on his last day as chief executive.
Earlier this month, a state Supreme Court majority turned aside a bid by two government watchdog groups to head off the crisis. Now only Scott can steer the state clear of a legal quagmire as he leaves office.
Scott has vowed to appoint successors to three retiring Supreme Court justices whose terms expire on the same day as his in January 2019. But an advisory opinion from the high court in 2006 concluded the power to fill vacancies under these circumstances rests with the incoming governor, not the outgoing one.
In a tacit concession that the court's reasoning in 2006 was sound, Scott's supporters in the Florida Legislature tried to countermand the advisory opinion in 2014 with a proposed constitutional amendment. The amendment would have handed the power to replace retiring justices and appellate judges to the outgoing governor. Voters didn't come close to buying it; the proposal fell 12 percentage points short of passage.
But Scott is acting like that vote never took place. In December 2016, when he elevated Judge Alan Lawson to the high court to succeed retiring Justice James E.C. Perry, the governor declared he would name successors to three other justices - Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince - whose terms, due to the state's mandatory retirement age for judges, end when his does.
The two watchdog groups, the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, filed a petition with the Supreme Court to block the governor's plan. This month six of the court's seven justices rejected the petition, arguing they couldn't rule against an action before it took place. But as Lewis, the lone dissenter, lamented, "Under the majority view, elected politicians can announce their intentions and plan to engage in all types of illegal and harmful conduct but no relief is available until the illegal and harmful act has already inflicted its damage."
Critics of the two watchdogs saw partisan motives behind their legal effort. But it's quite possible that the governor who succeeds Scott also will be a Republican. Regardless, precedents established by governors of one party can be exploited by future governors of another. Someday a Democratic chief executive in Florida, citing Scott's example, could claim the right to appoint justices and judges in the final hours of his or her term.
Some defenders of Scott's judicial power play have mocked opponents for taking the same position as U.S. Senate Republicans who refused to consider former President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nonsense. Obama nominated Garland 10 months before the end of his second term as president to fill a vacancy following the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia a month earlier. Scott is planning to replace three retiring justices immediately after their terms end on his final day in office.
The last time this situation arose in Florida, as the end of former Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles' term approached, he and incoming Republican Gov. Jeb Bush avoided a constitutional crisis by agreeing that Quince would fill a vacancy created by a retirement on the high court. It doesn't speak well for Scott that he has not signaled any intention to consider this kind of a compromise.
Scott, who is expected to ask voters next year to elect him to the U.S. Senate, would strengthen his case for their support if he demonstrated the proper respect for their opinion.
Online: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/