The Death Penalty Violates Human Rights

The death penalty in Florida is not just a legal issue, it is a human rights crisis. From arbitrary sentencing to degrading conditions of confinement, this punishment consistently violates the most basic principles of dignity and justice.

Torture by Another Name

People on death row in Florida spend 21 to 24 hours a day in solitary confinement, often for decades. Studies have shown that long-term isolation leads to severe mental deterioration, yet it remains standard practice.

Execution methods like electrocution and lethal injection have repeatedly caused botched and agonizing deaths, violating protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2023, Florida expanded the law to allow firing squads and any future method deemed constitutional. 

Behind closed doors, the state is experimenting with human lives. In Florida, a dog would be treated with more dignity than a person on death row. This is not justice, it’s state-sanctioned cruelty wrapped in legal procedure.

In Florida, the Death Penalty Breeds Injustice

Florida leads the nation in death row exonerations, 30 innocent people have been released after spending years, even decades, condemned to die. For every three executions, one person is later proven innocent. This isn't justice. It's a system built on error, indifference, and irreversible consequences. These are not isolated mistakes, they reveal a deep failure to protect the most basic human right: the right to life.

 

Race and poverty still dictate who lives and who dies.

Over 75% of those executed in Florida were convicted of killing white victims, even though most homicide victims in the state are Black.

Those too poor to afford private lawyers are often represented by underpaid or unqualified counsel. Prosecutors suppress evidence, strike Black jurors, and push for death in weak cases.

Human rights are violated not just at the time of execution, but from the moment of arrest.

We Demand Accountability

We fight to expose and challenge every single human rights violation tied to Florida’s death penalty, from wrongful convictions and the systematic neglect of mental health, to racial bias, state-inflicted trauma, and conditions that amount to psychological torture.

People are locked away for decades in cages barely bigger than a parking space. Innocent lives have been nearly lost because of prosecutorial misconduct and broken appeals processes. Families are ripped apart, communities targeted, and those with the least means are punished the hardest.

We stand alongside survivors, grieving families, legal advocates, and incarcerated voices, to fight a system built on violence and inequality.

Human rights are not negotiable. They are not earned, they are owed. And as long as Florida clings to the death penalty, we will rise, shout, and organize to defend those rights, because silence is complicity, and neutrality is not an option.

Join us, because your voice matters.

Every time someone speaks out, challenges injustice, or refuses to look away, the system trembles a little.

In Florida, the death penalty isn’t just a legal issue, it’s a human tragedy playing out in real time.

Behind every case, there’s a family torn apart, a life discarded, a community left grieving.

By standing with us, you become part of a movement that fights for truth, dignity, and the fundamental belief that no one should be tortured, silenced, or executed in our name.

Together, we can amplify the voices they try to bury.

Together, we can end this.

Death Row in Florida: Lawsuit project for better conditions !

 

At Abolition Florida, we are actively preparing a human rights lawsuit to challenge the degrading and dangerous conditions endured by individuals on Florida’s death row. Our organization is currently working to gather evidence, document testimonies, and identify legal partners willing to join this effort.

Contrary to public perception, the punishment is not just the sentence, it is the day-to-day reality of confinement. People sentenced to death in Florida are locked up between 21 and 24 hours per day, and yet, what they face during those hours goes beyond isolation. It is systematic abuse, both physical and psychological.

 

Among the most alarming issues reported:

 

  • Black, oily substances regularly appear in drinking water, raising serious contamination concerns

  • Toilet flooding on the first floor causes urine, feces, semen, and blood to overflow into neighboring cells, sometimes flooding entire rows

  • Extreme heat during summer months becomes unbearable in sealed, unventilated cells

  • Mold is pervasive in showers, on walls, and inside the ventilation systems

  • Methane gas coming from the vents causes headaches, nausea, and sleep disruption, waking some prisoners in the middle of the night

  • Fire alarms trigger randomly and at unbearable decibel levels, leading to tinnitus and other auditory damage

  • In winter, the heating system malfunctions, leaving certain wings freezing cold for days

This is not penologically justified. These are conditions of cruelty, not security.

We are also challenging the deliberate denial of parity in treatment. Certain elements of daily life available to general population prisoners are withheld from death row inmates without valid reason, including:

 

  • Real job assignments a fundamental right to contribute and earn

  • Extended video visitation, currently limited to just 15 minutes, with no option to extend to 30

  • The ability to send videograms to their loved ones, which would restore connection in a deeply isolating environment

  • Increased out-of-cell time, vital to mental and physical health

  • Access to canteen items, arbitrarily restricted

  • Access to addiction treatment, many are punished with solitary confinement instead of receiving help

  • Tablet and daily phone calls while on death watch. The Florida Department of Corrections imposes the harshest communication restrictions precisely when it matters most: during the 30 days before execution. While on death watch, access to tablets and daily phone calls is severely limited, just when maintaining contact with loved ones should be a basic, protected right. 

 

Furthermore, property restrictions across Florida’s 33 FAC code allow for prisoners to be placed in solitary confinement without a mattress, without basic personal items, without writing materials, sometimes for several days. This is not just cruel, it is unconstitutional.

 

We are also demanding the creation of a protective custody wing for individuals who fear for their safety in regular Dayroom wing. Currently, these individuals are locked 24/7, without access to a yard or dayroom. We believe that a dedicated protective custody wing should allow access to outdoor recreation and common areas, safely, under appropriate supervision.

 

Even high-security prisoners, including many on death row, must be allowed at least 1 hour per day out-of-cell. This time should include access to the phone, a shower, and even a little fresh air at least twice a week, individually supervised if necessary. Right now, many are behind steel doors 24/7, with no break whatsoever.

 

These are not luxuries. They are the minimum standards of humane treatment under U.S. constitutional law and international human rights norms.

 

We at Abolition Florida are working to bring this case forward and we are looking for attorneys, law firms, and advocacy organizations ready to fight beside us. If you believe that even those sentenced to death are still human beings entitled to basic dignity and safety, we want to hear from you.

 

Reach out to us. Help us bring light into the darkest corners of the Florida prison system.

Death Row Phenomenum

 

What happens on death row isn’t just confinement. It’s a methodical destruction of the human psyche. Known internationally as the Death Row Phenomenon, this psychological torture is not incidental, it’s built into the system.

 

It starts with total isolation. Twenty-three hours a day in a cell the size of a parking space. No meaningful human contact. No sunlight. No programs. No touch. Just silence, concrete, and the knowledge that one day, maybe next year, maybe in 30 years, you will be strapped to a gurney and killed by the State.

 

This isn’t conjecture. It’s recognized. The European Court of Human Rights, in the landmark Soering v. United Kingdom case (1989), refused to extradite a defendant to the U.S. because the conditions he would face on death row amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment. Not the execution itself, the wait. The living death. The endless mental agony. Since then, dozens of nations have demanded assurances before extraditing to U.S. states with capital punishment: no death row, no solitary, no death penalty.

 

Doctors like Stuart Grassian and Terry Kupers have extensively documented the damage: severe depression, hallucinations, self-mutilation, emotional collapse, and suicide. Some prisoners go insane. Others choose death over another year of waiting.

 

This isn’t justice. It’s psychological execution. And the world needs to see it for what it is.