US Supreme Court: Florida’s Death Penalty Unconstitutional
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down Florida’s death penalty law as unconstitutional for giving judges more power than juries in setting the sentence, requiring review by the state Supreme Court and Legislature.
The 8-1 decision by Justice Sonia Sotomayor could affect about 400 condemned inmates, the second-largest death row in the country after California. Florida executed two inmates last year.
While Florida juries recommend aggravating factors to justify the death penalty, the high court noted the state requires the judge to make critical findings necessary to impose the sentence, putting the judge in an improper “central and singular role.”
The court ruled in the Escambia County case of Timothy Lee Hurst, who was convicted of fatally stabbing a co-worker in 1998.
Of the 31 states with the death penalty, only four allow the judge rather than the jury to make the final decision on the sentence. The other states are Alabama, Delaware and Montana.
It’s unclear how the ruling will affect the other Florida inmates on death row and hundreds of others charged with capital crimes. Most death penalty experts believe attorneys for death row inmates will waste no time filing motions for reconsideration or to vacate their sentences based on the ruling.
“Retroactivity is a difficult question, but under state precedence it should be retroactive,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. “The safest way of describing this is the decision has the potential to apply broadly to cases that are currently pending and could have broad application to people already sentenced to death.”
The Florida Legislature, which started its annual session Tuesday, has listed fixing the state’s death penalty laws as a priority. Some legislators have called for abolition of capital punishment.
“I think we’re looking at the legislators devising a new sentencing scheme that permits the jury to unanimously find aggravating circumstances … and recommend the death penalty,” Dunham added.
Miami-Dade Public Defender Carlos Martinez called the timing on the day the Legislature convened “perfect.”
“They are saving the taxpayers some money that a special session would have cost,” he said.
“It is now clear that Florida will have to join the rest of the country in having juries decide if the death penalty is the appropriate penalty,” Martinez said. “It is now up to the Legislature to enact a statute that is constitutional.”
He said his office will file motions or supplemental briefs in its three death penalty cases and several dozen capital cases, citing the Supreme Court ruling.
“Whether the decision is retroactive is an issue that I’m certain will be litigated all over Florida,” Martinez said.
Craig Trocino, director of the Innocence Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law and a former death appeals lawyer, agreed.
“It remains to be seen whether this ruling voids all death row cases,” he said. “I believe it will have retroactive application and should void all the cases, and they should all have resentencings. It took the Supreme Court to force this.”
Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein said the ruling was expected since the Supreme Court has taken issue with Florida’s death penalty statute for some time.
“This is a long time coming,” he said. “Pretty much anyone who practices death penalty work has known that Florida’s statutory construction or machinery of death was unconstitutional. I believe that anyone charged with the death penalty may have escaped the penalty. This is not a procedural change; this is a substantive change. I’m overjoyed.”
The American Bar Association urged the U.S. Supreme Court to direct Florida to require juries to reach unanimous agreement on aggravating factors, and the Florida Supreme Court previously recommended the Legislature take up the issue of unanimous findings since 7-5 votes are sufficient under current law. The decision doesn’t go that far.
Hurst was in an unusual position.
“The maximum punishment Timothy Hurst could have received without any judge-made findings was life in prison without parole,” the court said. But the judge went farther.
“Florida requires not the jury but a judge to make the critical findings necessary to impose the death penalty,” Sotomayor wrote, reinforcing its decision in a 2002 case. “Florida fails to appreciate the judge’s central and singular role under Florida law, which makes the court’s findings necessary to impose death and makes the jury’s function advisory only. The state cannot now treat the jury’s advisory recommendation as the necessary factual finding” to support a death sentence.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the lone dissent, saying, “In light of this evidence, it defies belief to suggest that the jury would not have found the existence of either aggravating factor if its finding was binding.”
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