That's all it took for the Florida Legislature to both satisfy possible U.S. Supreme Court objections to the electric chair and restrain the rights of those wrongly accused of murder.

If Gov. Jeb Bush signs the proposed bills, death row denizens will now have a choice in how they can die. If they don't fancy bursting into flames in Old Sparky, they can choose to have a properly sterilized poison needle thrust into a handy vein. Either way the result is the same.

Meanwhile, their chances will get slimmer if they're desperately trying to prove their innocence. One of the proposed bills limits the number of a prisoner's appeals to two, which must run concurrently, the second filed no more than six months after the first. No additional appeals are granted without "clear and convincing" evidence.

So what, exactly, is "clear and convincing" evidence? That's a concept that is open to many interpretations. Most likely, the more you can afford to pay your lawyer, the more "clear and convincing" your evidence will be.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm against capital punishment. I find it a philosophical oxymoron for us to say, in effect, to the accused, "We, as a society, believe that murder is wrong, and to prove it we're going to kill you." Even if we had a perfect system of justice, I couldn't support the administration of the ultimate penalty.

Of course, we don't have a perfect system of justice. Mistakes are made. Guilty people are let go. Innocent people are convicted. That makes the absolutely final punishment of death at least irresponsible, even if you don't find it morally apprehensible.

Knowing the fallibility of the system, to make it even more likely that an innocent person could be put to death is a step backward for our society. No wonder we're viewed as barbarians by much of the rest of western civilization.

To make matters worse, legislators passed at two opportunities to make the system a bit more humane. They thwarted an attempt to make it illegal to execute the mentally retarded. They also blocked a provision that would make racial bias a valid basis for appeal. Instead, Gov. Bush ordered a new task force to study these issues, effectively putting off any action on them until at least March.

Do we really need a study to tell us it's wrong to put our mentally retarded citizens to death? Do we really need another study that shows minorities are over-represented on the executioner's reservation list?

What we need is a Legislature that is willing to take the time to look at these issues humanely and with compassion, rather than racing through them to beat the U.S. Supreme Court to a decision.