09 March 2023 :
(March 6, 2023) - Senate Criminal Justice Committee Backs Death Penalty Revamp
The Senate Criminal Justice Committee approved a bill (SB 450) that would allow judges to sentence defendants to death based on the recommendations of 8 of 12 jurors.
The issue emerged after a Broward County jury in October did not unanimously recommend death for Cruz, who murdered 17 students and faculty members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. A judge sentenced Cruz to life in prison.
The committee voted 6-2 to approve the bill, sponsored by Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R.
The House Criminal Justice Subcommittee is slated to take up its version of the bill (HB 555) on Tuesday.
Florida long allowed judges to impose death sentences based on majority, or 7-5, jury recommendations. But that changed after major decisions in 2016 by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court.
In January 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida ruled that the state’s death-penalty system was unconstitutional because it gave too much authority to judges, instead of juries, in imposing death sentences.
To try to carry out the ruling, the Legislature quickly passed a measure that required 10-2 jury votes before death sentences could be imposed.
But in October 2016, in the similarly named Hurst v. State, the Florida Supreme Court interpreted and applied the U.S. Supreme Court ruling and said unanimous jury recommendations were required. The Legislature responded in 2017 by putting such a unanimous requirement in law.
But after appointments by Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Supreme Court, with a newly conservative majority, reversed course in 2020, effectively allowing lawmakers to consider eliminating the unanimity requirement.
If lawmakers pass such a bill this year, Florida would join Alabama as the only states that would allow judges to impose death sentences based on nonunanimous jury recommendations, according to a Senate staff analysis.
The proposal would affect only the sentencing process and not what is known as the “guilt phase” of murder cases. Juries would still have to be unanimous in finding defendants guilty before sentencing could begin.
