Does Puerto Rico have death penalty? Felix Verdejo case may see federal law return punishment last used in 1927
Puerto Rican boxer Felix Verdejo Sánchez, accused of the horrific slaying of his pregnant lover, was indicted by a federal grand jury for the killing. He may now face the death penalty. Verdejo turned himself in to law enforcement officials on the island on Sunday evening, May 2.
His alleged victim was Keishla Rodríguez Ortiz, a pregnant woman whose body washed up in a lagoon on Saturday, May 1. Verdejo, a lightweight boxer who represented Puerto Rico at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, has been accused of punching Ortiz, injecting her with “substances,” tying her body to a block, and throwing her from a bridge into the water. Ortiz reportedly disappeared on Friday, April 30. Her body was identified through dental records. Her family members have reportedly alleged she was pregnant with his child.
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“What I want is justice for Keishla,” the victim’s mother, Keila Ortiz, said at a press conference Thursday, according to the Associated Press. “We’re going through a pain that Tony and I never imagined.” Her father said, however, that despite the brutal nature of the crime, he does not support seeking the death penalty. “That doesn’t solve anything for me. What’s done is done,” he said, according to the AP. “Let him remember every day who my daughter was.”
Does Puerto Rico have the death penalty?
Judge Camille Velez at a hearing last week said, “This is a death penalty-eligible case.” As per the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit organization “serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment,” which was founded in 1990, Spanish colonists brought the death penalty to Puerto Rico. The first recorded executions in Puerto Rico, as per the center, took place in 1514 when four slaves were hanged for an uprising.
The last execution in Puerto Rico was the hanging of Pascual Ramos in 1927 for the murder of his boss. Two years later. following Latin American abolitionist movements, Puerto Rico’s legislature abolished the death penalty on April 26, 1929.
In 1952, when Puerto Rico drafted and ratified its own constitution, the Bill of Rights included the straightforward decree “the death penalty shall not exist.” However, because of Puerto Rico’s status as a Commonwealth of the United States, it is subject to some federal laws and the US has recently sought the death penalty on federal charges in a number of cases. However, no death sentences have been passed so far.
In 2013, Alexis Candelario Santana, a man convicted of killing eight people in a crowded bar in Puerto Rico was spared the death penalty and sentenced to life in prison. The jury failed to reach a unanimous decision on a death sentence for Santana, who was convicted by the same panel in March 2013 for the “La Tombola killings” of October 2009.