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As Florida’s Supreme Court weighs whether the 390 inmates on death row should all be re-sentenced to life after the state’s death penalty scheme was ruled unconstitutional, Mike Vasilinda tells us a former Florida Chief Justice who is arguing on the side of giving the inmates life,  is saying “I told you so”.

Harry Lee Anstead was the Chief Justice of Florida’s Supreme Court from 2002 to 2004. 18 months after after the U-S Supreme Court struck down Arizona’s death penalty in what is know as the Ring case, Anstead argued that Ring applied to Florida. Other justices disagreed. More than a decade later, he was proven right when the high court threw out Florida’s sentencing scheme, citing the Ring decision.

“This decision about Florida’s statute being unconstitutional should have been made many years ago” Anstead told us.

Because the other justices ignored Anstead’s dissent so long ago, he’s now going two other former Florida Supreme Court justices in arguing that all 390 inmates on death row should now get life sentences.

“This hopefully is setting things right in a large way, not a small way, in a large way” says the retired jurist.

Anstead remains troubled that since his dissent, now proven right, several dozen inmates have been put to death. Gainesville Killer Danny Rolling was among them.

“A number of prisoners on death row have been put to death in Florida. And arguably, they’ve been put to death under an unconstitutional death penalty scheme” says Anstead.

Ironically Lloyd Duest who was the the inmate in the case in which Anstead first cited his Ring objections, has died… not by lethal injection, but by natural causes.

Lloyd Duest died in 2011, 8 years after Justice Anstead thought his sentence should have been reduced to live in prison. While the three justices say all death row inmates should be re-sentenced to life in prison, the Attorney General told the could that everyone on death row should stay there.