Henry Sireci has spent the last 40 years on death row in a Florida penitentiary. He awaits execution as he is held responsible for the death of Howard Poteet, a car salesman.

Henry has always denied any responsibility in this crime. Arrested in 1976, he has spent the last 4 decades waiting to be executed. Now his lawyers have applied for Italian citizenship and consular ᴀssistance. This is by virtue of the fact that Henry Sireci’s grandparents are both Sicilian, born in Caccamo, in the province of Palermo.

The dynamics of the murder and the arrest

According to what emerges from the American chronicles, Sireci had gone to buy a car. It was December 3, 1975. During the negotiation with the dealer, Mr. Howard Poteet, it seems that the two quarreled. According to the prosecution, Sireci, armed with a wrench and a knife, murdered Poteet with 55 stab wounds. The man died of hemorrhagia, a cut to his throat was lethal.

The death penalty in the USA

In 2016, this case made people think about the death penalty. One judge, Stephen Breyer, had sided against his colleagues in favor of reviewing the sentence, considering the 40 years already served.

We are talking about a man who lived in prison under threat of execution for 40 years

But the judge’s food for thought evidently did not convince. So Sireci’s lawyers resorted to a last, desperate attempt: the change of citizenship.

The Death Penalty in America: A Muted Topic

The case of Sireci also serves to bring attention back to the practice of the death penalty in the United States. We remember George Stinney Jr, of African descent, or the youngest person to be sentenced to death in the United States. He was only 14 years old when he was executed in the electric chair, in 1944.
The accusation that weighed on his shoulders was very heavy: he was accused of the murder of two white girls, Betty aged 11 and Mariary aged 7. The young black man has always declared himself innocent and his extraneousness to the crimes charged against him has definitively emerged after 70 years. Too late.

5,380 volts were used to kill him, with a sharp blow. They had to put books on the electric chair to adjust it to the boy’s height. As many believe, his fault was only that he was black.

The Sireci case

Returning to the present day, we do not know if Sireci is really responsible for the murder of the car dealer. But after 40 years of imprisonment, 5380 volts would still not be needed. You never need 5380 volts. But this case also presents legal anomalies. The death sentence in Florida today requires unanimity, but in 1991 for Henry Sireci there was none, as one of the judges opposed it. The Florida Supreme Court has commuted all non-unanimous death penalty sentences to ‘end of sentence never’ since 2002. Leaving the previous ones in a judicial and bureaucratic limbo. This is why Sireci grew old on death row.

The mayor of Caccamo, Nicasio di Cola, has responded to the lawyers’ appeal and declares himself ready to consult the Foreign Ministry.

He is one of our fellow citizens

At least in this Italy is an example.