High court: Florida death penalty system is unconstitutional

It was not immediately apparent whether Tuesday’s decision would have an impact on more than 400 Death Row prisoners in the state, which has the nation’s second-highest number of inmates sentenced to death, or on two executions that Gov. Rick Scott has scheduled in February and March. The jury had voted 7-5 to recommend the death penalty for Hurst. The trial judge, on her own, made the findings concerning aggravating circumstances that are necessary to justify the death penalty. But Florida law did not require the jury to say how it voted on each factor.

Justice Samuel Alito, with the sole dissenting opinion, noted that the Supreme Court was wrong to reverse course after “repeatedly” reviewing and upholding Florida’s sentencing regime over the last 25 years. But I think Breyer is wrong to believe that the Sixth Amendment doesn’t offer a different route to the same conclusion.

Justice Alito dissented with the majority judgment and said ‘it defies belief to suggest that the jury would not have found the existence of either aggravating factor if its finding was binding.

Timothy Hurst, the man at the center of the case, was implicated in a grisly crime that Sotomayor recounted.

Statehouse leaders reacted to the ruling saying lawmakers will move quickly to overhaul the state’s death penalty system. But ultimately the judge’s sentencing order must reflect the judge’s independent judgment about the aggravating and mitigating factors, according to Florida law.

“In light of today’s United States Supreme Court decision holding Florida’s capital sentencing procedure unconstitutional, the state will need to make changes to its death-sentencing statutes”.

A nine Judge Bench, by 8-1 majority, said that this law violates the Sixth Amendment which protects a defendant’s right to an impartial jury. Tuesday’s decision has no bearing on Florida’s method of capital punishment or the Eighth Amendment: death row inmates may still choose between lethal injection and the electric chair.

This isn’t the first time the Supreme Court has intervened in Florida’s death penalty practice. Florida has 390 people on death row.

After a four-hour delay, the court declined to hear Bolin’s case.

Zaldivar told WESH 2 News that Okafor should get no break from the high court’s decision.

Critics said it should no surprise that the Supreme Court ruled against the state. But legal experts said it may apply only to those whose initial appeals are not yet exhausted. “Altman’s idea? Yes, I support his idea, but it’s not a major priority of mine, because that’s the penalty that those folks received for causing the death of someone else”.

The decision to sentence Hurst to death must be based “on a jury’s verdict, not a judge’s fact-finding, ” Sotomayor wrote.

A Florida judge in the current system can overrule a jury’s decision for a death sentence and impose a life in prison sentence, but cannot impose a death sentence if a jury recommends life.

The case involved Timothy Lee Hurst, who was convicted of stabbing a co-worker more than 60 times when robbing a Pensacola restaurant in 1998.