But executions have been on hold since January 12 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s sentencing law as a violation of the right to a jury trial because the jury’s role is advisory. The new law, however, would require ten out of 12 jurors in a capital punishment case to agree on the death penalty.
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The current law does not require unanimous jury recommendation.
The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the March 17 execution of Mark Asay, a Jacksonville man sentenced to death in 1987 for murdering two men.
The measure includes other changes that lawmakers hope will resolve the lingering legal questions and open the door to the state resuming executions.
The Florida high court is scheduled to hear a swath of arguments regarding the impact of the Hurst decision on death penalty cases next week.
Asay’s is now the second execution to be delayed while the State works to figure out a new death penalty sentencing scheme.
Earlier this month, the Florida Supreme Court indefinitely postponed the execution of Cary Michael Lambrix while the justices consider the impact of the Hurst decision on his and other Death Row inmates sentences.
After a brief debate, the Senate passed the House bill (HB 7101) on a 35 to 5 vote. Jeff Clemens, a Lake Worth Democrat and one of the “no” votes.
Democratic senators said they oppose the 10-2 requirement for jury recommendations and said they favored that it be unanimous, but that was strongly opposed by prosecutors, and it was quickly rejected by the House in favor of a 9-3 proposal and the final 10-2 compromise with the Senate. “I just think if you’re going to kill someone, you’d better be sure”.
Her ruling applied only to four death row inmates, she noted.
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“Even after this bill is signed into law, there will still be serious constitutional problems with the death penalty in Florida, and we have to stop tinkering with the machinery of death and address them”, Richardson said. A 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in a case known as Ring v. Arizona, requires that determinations of such aggravating circumstances must be made by juries, not judges.
