In one of the biggest death penalty decisions in years, Florida's Supreme Court ruled on Friday that only a unanimous jury may sentence a defendant to the death penalty. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the court's decisions mean that the state "effectively has no death penalty." This is a huge deal, given that Florida ranks fourth in total number of executions over the last 40 years.
The court issued two decisions, both related to the U.S. Supreme Court's January decision in Hurst v. Florida, which found Florida's prior death penalty statute to be unconstitutional because "it did not give jurors a sufficient role in deciding whether defendants should be put to death."
The Florida legislature then revised the death penalty statute to say that a jury's vote is required to sentence someone to death, but only 10 of the 12 jurors needed to vote in favor.
But this, too, was found unconstitutional on Friday, in one of decisions by the Florida Supreme Court that found that only unanimous juries can sentence someone to the death penalty. The second decision held that Timothy Hurst, the defendant in question in the January SCOTUS case, is eligible for a new sentencing hearing.
“Our latest research has shown that non-unanimous jury verdicts can lead to the conviction of persons with intellectual disabilities, mental illnesses, and even those who are innocent," said Harvard Law Professor Ron Sullivan, co-founder of the Fair Punishment Project. "The Florida Supreme Court’s decision validates our concern about the constitutionality of these verdicts.”
This should not have been a surprise to Florida prosecutors, a number of whom have pursued death sentences despite being repeatedly warned that the Florida sentencing scheme was an extreme outlier and possibly unconstitutional.
“[W]e express our considered view, as the court of last resort charged with implementing Florida’s capital sentencing scheme, that in light of developments in other states and at the federal level, the Legislature should revisit the statute to require some unanimity in the jury’s recommendations,” stated the Florida Supreme Court in the 2005 case State v. Steele.
Despite being warned by the state, prosecutors continued with business as usual. “Too Broken to Fix,” a recent two-part report by the Fair Punishment Project, found that in the 3,143 counties or county equivalents in America, only 16 (or 0.5 percent) imposed five or more death sentences between 2010 and 2015. Four of those 16 counties are in Florida, including Duval, Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Miami-Dade.
All of those counties had a significant percentage of capital cases decided by non-unanimous juries. In 60 percent of the death penalty sentences in Hillsborough County, 86 percent in Miami-Dade, 88 percent in Duval, and a staggering 100 percent in Pinellas, non-unanimous juries were responsible for the sentences.
“The prosecutors who relentlessly pursued death sentences despite being repeatedly placed on notice that the state’s death penalty regime was constitutionally defective should be held accountable for the emotional and financial costs they have imposed on victims’ families and on taxpayers,” said University of Miami School of Law Professor Mary Anne Franks.
All four of the state’s attorneys in these jurisdictions have faced or are facing re-election this year. Daily Kos covered Duval County's state attorney, Angela Corey, who was defeated in the August primary. Pinellas County State Attorney,Bernie McCabe, and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle are both running unopposed. But in Hillsborough County, State Attorney Mark Ober faces a tough challenge for his seat from Democrat Andrew Warren.