US Supreme Court Declares Florida’s Death Penalty Sentencing System

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Florida’s system for sentencing people to death is unconstitutional because it gives too much power to judges – and not enough to juries – to decide capital sentences. The ruling, in a near-unanimous 8-1 vote, arose from the case of a man sentenced to death by a judge for the 1998 stabbing of a co-worker after a jury recommendation for execution.

The justices based their ruling on a 2002 Supreme Court decision in Arizona that declared that a Jury, not a judge, must determine the necessary facts to impose a death sentence, as reported by Reuters. “In Florida, it’s the judge, not the jury that decides whether to impose the death penalty, and the judge sentenced Hurst to death”.

In a major decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday found that Florida’s death-penalty sentencing system is unconstitutional. The judge so found and sentenced Hurst to death. “Maybe the future ones the judge has to go by what the jury says”, Freiberg says.

She added that none of Florida’s “bevy of arguments” for upholding the constitutionality of Hurst’s sentence were valid.

“His penalty is now invalid under the U.S. Constitution”, said Dennis Tracey, who is the attorney for Tommy Zeigler, one of the oldest inmates on death row. Fewer death sentences were also given in 2015.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was the lone dissenter. It was one of only three death penalty states without the requirement. The State Attorney’s Office for the 14th Judicial Circuit says they are assessing the impact this opinion will have on its 12 defendants on death row. However, most of the state’s prisoners will not be affected because their appeals have run out or their convictions were based on indisputable aggravating circumstances.

Hurst is the latest in a series of Supreme Court cases over the past several years that have nibbled around the edges of capital sentencing in the USA, taking on lethal injection drugs, jury selection, execution of the mentally handicapped and of convicts for crimes committed as juveniles, and jury instructions.

There are hundreds of inmates in Florida prisons sitting on death row, including some prominent Central Florida convicts.

The case, Hurst v. Florida, challenged Florida’s unusual method of imposing death sentences. At least 30 states have abolished the death penalty or refrained from using it in the last eight years. But Florida law did not require the jury to say how it voted on each factor.

The high court released its opinion mid-morning.

Critics said it should no surprise that the Supreme Court ruled against the state.

House Criminal Justice chairman Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami, said his committee will take on a bill to address the Supreme Court’s problems. A notable exception could be Alabama’s controversial death-sentence scheme, which allows trial judges to override a jury’s sentence of life imprisonment and impose the death penalty instead, or vice versa.