FLORIDA - Republican Gov. Rick Scott began 2014 the same way he spent much of 2013: signing a death warrant.

Scott's 1st order of business in the new year was to set a date for the execution of Juan Carlos Chavez, convicted of abducting, raping and murdering 9-year-old Jimmy Ryce in 1995.

Scott is sending people to the death chamber at a pace seen only at one other time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976: when 8 people were executed in 1984 under Democratic Gov. Bob Graham.

Scott, who oversaw 7 executions in 2013, would have matched Graham's record if the Supreme Court hadn't halted an execution scheduled for Dec. 3 to examine a new mix of drugs used in lethal injections.

In singling out Chavez, Scott continued his trend of designating the worst offenders as the 1st to have their death sentences carried out.

"I know signing a death warrant is one of the toughest jobs that the governor has to have, but it's an essential job and I am very grateful he did it in this case," Don Ryce, Jimmy's 70-year-old father, told a news conference held Friday in his Vero Beach home.

For death penalty supporters and victims' families, some of whom wait three decades for a sentence to be carried out, Scott's stepped-up pace is a good thing.

"I believe in the principle that justice delayed is justice denied, and 30 years after the event is an intolerable period of time for the family of the victim to have to wait for justice to be provided," said the former Governor Graham, who was in office when Florida resumed executions in 1979.

Graham said despite the high number of executions last year, 14 people were also placed on death row, bringing the current population to 403.

"The backlog continues to grow," Graham said. "Those statistics indicate there's a long way to go in achieving that principle of avoiding justice being denied by delaying."

But to opponents, the number of death warrants Scott is signing is a cause for alarm.

"6 states in the last 6 years have gotten rid of the death penalty. The number of executions are down, the number of death sentences are down. The entire nation and the civilized world is moving away from using the death penalty and Florida is going in the opposite direction," said Mark Elliott of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "It's a sad state of affairs and it bodes very ominously for 2014."

By signing a death warrant for Chavez, 46, on the first business day of the year, Scott is signaling that he will keep up his 2013 pace.

The Ryce case horrified the state and led to the passage of the Jimmy Ryce Act, which allows authorities to commit dangerous sexual predators to mental institutions once they have completed their prison terms.

Jimmy was missing for three months until his book bag was found in Chavez's trailer on a rural south Miami-Dade County ranch. Chavez confessed to abducting the boy after he got off his school bus, raping him, and then shooting him as he tried to escape. He also confessed to cutting up Jimmy's body and placing the remains in large planters before filling them with concrete.

"If there was ever anyone in the world who deserved to die, it's the man who did that," Don Ryce said.

Chavez is scheduled to be executed Feb. 12.

"Signing death warrants is one of the Governor's most solemn duties," Scott spokesman John Tupps wrote in a statement issued Friday. "His foremost concerns are consideration for the families of the victims and the finality of judgments."

Chris Crowley had to wait 27 years to see the execution of William Happ, the man who raped and murdered his sister Angie in 1986. Happ was executed this past fall.

Crowley said he is happy to see Scott signing more death warrants, saying it helps bring an end to frustration felt by victims' families who wait years for sentences to be carried out.

He knows what it's like to see about 400 names on the death row roster and the feeling that the one case he was following might get lost.

"I sat down one day and I figured it out - how many cases were actually in front of him and how many cases had been signed previously over the years, and I just figured that he'd be there another decade at least. Easily," Crowley said. "I was just like, "Damn! I could die before this."

Before each execution, the Florida Catholic Conference asks Scott to spare the condemned.

"We are concerned. It does distort society's understanding of the sacredness of life and we don't need to resort to executions to punish people and protect society," said Michael Sheedy, the group's public policy director.

Source: Associated Press, January 4, 2014