GoPetition.com summons voices out of the Internet void for any number of disparate causes.

Save Polaroid film (29,602 online signatures). Ban smoking in Ontario Apartments (good for one signature). Keep the Cleveland Browns in Cleveland (All seven Cleveland fans signed.) More pickles on McDonald's cheeseburgers (seven.) And the Quixotic ``I want to go out with WWE diva Mickie Laree James.'' Good for a single lonely signature.

GoPetition.com also provided a forum for 2,218 petitioners disturbed by the appeals, retrial, hung jury, retrial and yet more appeals that have kept Paul B. Johnson alive in his six-by-nine-foot cell on Florida's Death Row for 28 years.

Yet there's something peculiar about an online petition, launched by Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, becoming a factor in an actual death warrant. Sheriff Judd sent the petition to Gov. Charlie Crist and personally lobbied the governor to expedite the execution of Johnson, who was convicted of a 1981 triple murder including the killing of a Polk County deputy sheriff.

Earlier this month, Crist signed a Nov. 4 death warrant for the 60-year-old Johnson. ``Surprise'' might be an odd word to assign to a 28-year-old triple-murder conviction, but Johnson's lawyers claimed just that. One of them, Terri Backhus, said she was ``flabbergasted.''

Sheriff Judd's online petition claims that Johnson ``has exhausted all his appeals.'' In fact, Johnson's lawyers were making oral arguments Wednesday morning before the Florida Supreme Court. Justice Barbara Pariente, noting an execution date just one week away, complained the court was put in a difficult position.

Johnson's case has been complicated by revelations that the testimony for the prosecution -- delivered by a jailhouse snitch -- might have been surreptitiously orchestrated by the homicide investigator. The snitch later recanted, saying he was promised a lighter sentence. His new version was dismissed but the discovery of police notes in the case now seem to verify the story.

The snitch testimony -- that Johnson told him he intended to fake ``like he was crazy'' -- was probably unnecessary clutter. Insanity defenses rarely persuade jurors. Johnson's claim that he was whacked out on crystal meth when he went on a killing spree amounts to a desperation defense. But Polk County authorities appear to have overreached, creating the grounds for appeal.

Still, it's understandable that Polk Countians are ready to be done with Johnson, whose 1981 conviction was tossed on appeal. Then came a mistrial, then a conviction in 1988. But why, out of 387 convicts on Death Row, would Crist pick Johnson to fast-track? Other than, perhaps, that online petition. And Crist's hopeful bid for a U.S. Senate seat.

Ever since Gov. Bob Martinez went on a death-warrant-signing binge, signing 139 warrants between 1987 and 1991, stressing out the appeals system with emergency hearings and stays, governors have observed a kind of gentleman's agreement, waiting to sign warrants until the death cases go through federal review.

Johnson still hasn't appealed to the feds.

``I've never seen this before,'' said Backhus, a lawyer specializing in death penalty cases since 1991. ``It's made things frantic. The court now has to wade through the entire case in a week.''

Of course, she added, ``I've never seen an online petition in a death case before either.''

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