400 inmates could escape death after one man’s sentence was thrown out

The 8-1 decision said Florida’s system is flawed because juries can only recommend the death penalty while judges make the final decision.

The opinion released Tuesday said the state’s capital sentencing scheme violates the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial because it gives too much power to judges, and not enough to juries, when determining death penalty sentences.

The Supreme Court’s Tuesday decision leaves Alabama the last state where a judge can override a jury recommendation to impose a death sentence.

The case before the court was that of Timothy Hurst, a man who was sentenced to death for murdering the manager of the restaurant where he worked in 1998.

The jury in the Hurst case recommended a death sentence to the judge, but its vote was split seven to five.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declared that Florida’s death penalty sentencing system is unconstitutional. Notwithstanding this recommendation, Florida law required the judge to hold a separate hearing and determine whether sufficient aggravating circumstances existed to justify imposing the death penalty.

Under the Sixth Amendment, criminal defendants are guaranteed the right to trial “by an impartial jury”.

“Every defendant in Florida whose death sentence was imposed in this matter will be challenging the constitutionality of his or her death sentence under Hurst”, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Highlands County has sent two cases to Death Row: William Harold Kelley, 73, was tried for the October 3, 1966 murder-for-hire of Charles Von Maxcy. Under Florida law, a judge must give this advice “great weight” in the sentencing determination, but it ultimately his or her “independent judgment” that determines if death is an appropriate sentence.

For seven of the U.S. Supreme Court’s justices, this sentencing scheme clashed with the Court’s decision in the 2002 case Ring v. Arizona. “Nobody should be surprised by this decision by the nation’s highest court”. He persuaded a judge and jury to impose the death penalty against a 15-year-old who robbed and stomped to death an elderly lady.

Hurst’s attorneys argued that it’s unconstitutional for judges to have to consider the jury’s vote only as “advisory”.

The decision striking down the state’s death-penalty sentencing structure comes almost three years after Scott signed into law a bill, sponsored by Negron and Rep. Matt Gaetz, aimed at reducing delays in death penalty cases. He said the Florida legislature had been urged repeatedly to shore up Florida’s capital punishment sentencing scheme to enhance the jury’s role.

“There are some real benefits associated with judicial sentences”, Florida Solicitor General Allen Winsor said, according to USA Today.

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 justices had just ruled on a narrow case involving lethal injection protocols, but had found themselves increasingly pressed to address the moral issues being raised out of legal challenges, appeals and exonerations that were becoming impossible to ignore.