The state's highest court has delayed next week's planned execution of an inmate until until it determines how to apply a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state's death penalty system is flawed.
Florida's highest court will hear a case that may determine the fate of some 390 death row inmates. The case comes after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state's death sentencing system.
Gov. Paul LePage's comments follow remarks earlier this month in which he characterized drug dealers as men named "D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty" who come to Maine and "impregnate young white girls."
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Monday that convicts serving life for crimes committed while juveniles must be resentenced. For some prisoners, that may mean early release.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that Florida's capital punishment sentencing process is unconstitutional because it allows judges, not juries, to decide whether to impose the death penalty.
Saudi Arabia's spate of 47 executions last week continued a trend from 2015, in which several countries that have the death penalty used it more often.
According to numbers compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, the number of people executed in the United States is at its lowest level since 1991. Death sentences are down 33 percent.
The death penalty in the U.S. is under scrutiny after a series of botched executions. Some death row lawyers and activists say the repeated delays are torture for prisoners like Richard Glossip.
A judge ruled last year that the decades of uncertainty California death row inmates have to endure violated their rights. An appeals court said it couldn't uphold that constitutional interpretation.