The State of Florida is a death penalty state. So that means murders committed under certain circumstances may qualify the convict for a sentence of death by lethal injection. But before 2000, when the legislature voted to abandon it (unless specifically requested by the condemned) the tool used to do the deed was an electric chair. It was nicknamed "Old Sparky" and had, in it's final few executions, lived up to it's name by actually sparking and burning the convict alive before the electricity killed him/her.Though I don't believe in the death penalty, two recent cases of murder are under my scrutiny because of my proximity to them. In both of these there are fans of "Old Sparky" calling for it to be brought out of retirement.
The first, as I posted about back in September 2007, is the case of Andrew Allred. As you can read about in this post, I knew him personally. Well, he recently got sentenced to death, but get this...he asked for it. Yup. Told the judge he wanted to die. I remember his nihilistic personality from Convergys...yes I can see him going out this way. How bizarre.
The second is the local but now world-famous case of the missing toddler Caylee Anthony, now having been found, dead and half-buried in a garbage bag not a thousand yards away from her home...
Right near the elementary school she would have eventually attended had she lived.
I don't have to go into the long litany of outrageous details in this case, because unless you've been living under a rock for the past six months, you know them already.
The media pundits are mulling over possible death scenarios, the most likely being that Caylee's mom Casey tried to knock her kid out with chloroform so she could go partying at the nightclubs but accidentally killed Caylee with an overdose. When she "seen what she had done", she simply dumped her almost 3-year old baby's tiny body in the woods near her house. And then, as we all know, went on about her carefree party-filled life and wove her tangled mess of a web of lies.
I predict her trial will be the newest "Trial of the Century". When you factor in her cold, unfeeling attitude and entitled demeanor along with her parents' quirky wide-eyed and loud-mouthed behavior, you can see the stage is set to deliver an all-time dazzling performance.
Throw in a bumbling sheriff's department filled with southern-accented Barney Fifes, the outlandish attorneys of the area with their own closets full of skeletons and the vulture-like media like Geraldo, Nancy Grace, and Greta Van Susteren and man, we're gonna be glued to the TV set like nothing since the O.J. Trial.
All this drama needs is for a mysterious intruder dressed in a black cape and wide-brimmed black hat to barge their way into the bustling courtroom just before the reading of the verdict and shout out "I am Zenaida Gonzalez and I did it!"
But that final scene is only going to play out in the fantasies of a troubled young lady as she sits, decade after decade, forever alone, in her dark grimy cell behind cold steel bars.