US Supreme Court says juries alone should decide death penalty cases

“A Jury’s mere recommendation is not enough”, wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“The Court has been working steadily for more than fifteen years, since its decision in 2000 in Apprendi v. New Jersey, to enhance the role of jurors in criminal trials”, Denniston wrote on the SCOTUS blog. But if it did, Justice Alito wrote that Florida’s error was harmless because Mr. Hurst had committed crimes that clearly justified death. In his solo dissent, Justice Samuel Alito also disagreed with the Court’s earlier Sixth Amendment rulings and argued that Florida’s system was far from identical to the one struck down by Ring.

Butler said former Indian River County resident Rodney Lowe, who has twice been sentenced to death, has an appeal pending after a jury in 2012 returned him to death row for the murder of a Sebastian store clerk. So a jury could base its decision on one particular aggravating factor, but a judge could then rely on a different factor the jury never considered.

“This shows that the Supreme Court continues to apply close scrutiny to the death penalty”. Despite that ruling in the case of Ring vs. Arizona, the Florida courts had continued to uphold death sentences there on the grounds that juries had recommended death as the proper verdict.

“There will be those out there who say no, the application of this case is just to Hurst”.

The ruling came down from the court at the start of the 2016 legislative session saying juries, not judges, should decide whether a defendant should be executed. If judges can find their own set of facts and use them to alter a jury’s verdict, the Constitution’s jury trial guarantee is largely meaningless.

Sotomayor said Florida’s system is flawed because it allows a sentencing judge to find aggravating factors “independent of a jury’s fact-finding”.

Hurst’s attorneys argued that it’s unconstitutional for judges to have to consider the jury’s vote only as “advisory”. Juries don’t need to be unanimous in recommending a death penalty to a judge and the judge has the final say.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that juries, not judges, must determine whether the necessary facts exist to warrant a death sentence.

Florida ranks second in the nation behind California in the number of death row inmates, with a total of 400 individuals now awaiting execution.

The way the death penalty is decided in Florida is changing after a landmark Supreme Court decision.

Radelet, now a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said he expects the Florida Supreme Court will at least temporarily block all future executions. It could affect other pending cases in the state, which has 390 people on death row.

It seems likely that the ruling will have limited impact outside of Florida, because no other state has exactly the same procedure.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said her office is reviewing the ruling.

News of the high court’s decision stunned Florida legislators.

The Florida Supreme Court had rejected Hurst’s challenge in a 2014 ruling.