Florida’s sentencing process in death penalty cases violates the constitutional rights of criminal defendants, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, siding with a death row inmate convicted in the 1998 murder of a fried-chicken restaurant manager.
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The justices on Tuesday ruled 8-1 that the state’s sentencing procedure is flawed because juries play only an advisory role in recommending death while the judge can reach a different decision.
Aggravating factors must be found to impose the death penalty, and, as The Associated Press reports, Hurst’s lawyers argued that because Florida law does not require jury members to say how they voted on each factor, they could have differed on those matters.
Currently, juries in death penalty cases make a recommendation to judges on whether to impose a life in prison or death sentence.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s death sentencing system as unconstitutional on Tuesday, casting doubt on the status of all the state’s death sentences.
“The Sixth Amendment protects a defendant’s right to an impartial jury”, she wrote.
Jurors in both cases recommended the death penalty. The ruling overturned two of its precedent decisions-in 1984 and 1989-that had favored Florida’s approach.
State Sen. That Altman, a Republican from Cape Canaveral, has filed a measure that would require a unanimous jury decision to hand down a death sentence. In the Seventh Judicial Circuit, St. Johns County has 5 death row inmates.
“Either that or we abolish the death penalty”, he said.
In the sentencing phase, the jury is required to weigh any aggravating and any mitigating circumstances that might support or undercut a death sentence. Attorneys who challenged the law said that Florida’s death penalty system is in violation of a previous U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Ring v. Arizona.
More broadly, the decision could affect other Florida death sentences – at least those still on direct appeal – and potentially more, depending on whether the decision is given retroactive effect in Florida. The reason given is that the state’s law gives more powers to judges rather than juries to decide whether the perpetrator should be given capital punishment. The judge agreed with an 11-1 jury vote for death.
Coxe says the Supreme Court decision isn’t surprising because the high court already declared in 2002 juries have sole responsibility for deciding the aggravating factors, those case specifics that warrant execution. Florida state courts would need to decide if the now-void sentencing procedure was a “harmless error” that would not have had any bearing on Hurt’s death sentence, meaning that Hurt would have been sentenced to death regardless of exactly how it occurred.
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The capital sentencing scheme in Florida is a hybrid among states that enforce capital punishment. Alabama, Montana and DE have similar sentencing schemes that also could be affected. The high court did what the governor and legislators are required by their oaths of office to do – and it sent a signal that Florida’s practices, long an outlier, will remain in the public eye.
