Declaring that a Jewish inmate who has languished on death row for more than a quarter of a century should not be executed next week, some 200 Jewish and non-Jewish organizations are petitioning Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to intervene and spare his life.
In the petition, the organizations – which include Amnesty International, the National Council of Young Israel, Agudath Israel of America, the Orthodox Union, the Rabbinical Alliance of America, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and the Aleph Institute, a Chabad-Lubavitch program that serves Jewish prisoners in the United States – argue that Martin Grossman, 45, had no intent to kill and was not able to fully comprehend the nature of his crime when he shot Florida Wildlife Officer Margaret Park on Dec. 13, 1984.
At the time, the organizations state, Grossman was a 19-year-old drug-addicted drop-out with borderline intelligence who panicked when Park came upon him and a friend who were going to fire a found handgun in an isolated nature reserve.
“He may have killed, but he is not a killer,” reads a letter submitted by several of the organizations. “He acted under the influence of drugs and alcohol.”
Legal experts, including noted Harvard University law professor Alan M. Dershowitz, agree.
“Even those who strongly support capital punishment would limit it to recidivists or people who commit the most heinous of crimes,” explains Dershowitz. “Martin Grossman fits neither of those categories. He does not belong on death row.”
“A psychiatrist who evaluated him concluded, from his psychological and medical condition, that he could not have formed the intent to kill,” declares a press release from the Aleph Institute. Grossman’s accomplice, Thanye Taylor, “served less than three years in prison, while Martin was sentenced to death.”
Grossman’s “childhood history,” says a petition signed by almost 12,000 people, “is marked by the fact that as a young child, Martin had [a] feeling of impotence imposed upon his undeveloped psyche, much too young, because he was unable to relieve the suffering of his father, a veteran … whom Martin only knew as an ailing and needy invalid.”
Among other contentions, Grossman’s attorneys and those supporting his plea to the governor argue that allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and an insufficient effort by Grossman’s past defense team – as well as several mitigating circumstances ignored by the court during sentencing – compel Crist to grant a 60-day stay in order for the attorneys to prepare a comprehensive clemency application.
The Florida Supreme Court this week upheld the sentence.
Rabbi Menachem Katz, who has visited Grossman regularly over the past 15 years, says that he is different from the youth who robbed Park’s life.
“Martin has shown deep and profound remorse over the years,” says Katz, “and is no longer the same wild, reckless person he was 26 years ago.”
“His crime, committed when he was a teenager, was unplanned, unpremeditated and impulsive — the product of a serious mental illness, that can now be proved by medical technology that was unavailable at the time of his sentencing,” echoes Dershowitz. “He has been in prison for more than a quarter of a century, during which time he has been a model prisoner who has shown great remorse for what he did. All that he is seeking now is a 60 day postponement of his execution, so that his supporters can martial the evidence and present his case for clemency.
“No one should be rushed to execution while doubts remain unresolved,” he continues. “Justice demands that he be given the 60 days to prove that he does not deserve to die at the hands of the state.”
A memo from Amnesty International includes background information about the case.
what now Do we know what happened about him?