Ruling by U.S. Supreme Court impacts Florida’s death penalty sentencings

An Equal Justice Initiative report in 2014 found that state judges overrode jury verdicts in 111 capital cases in the state since 1976. It will also change the prosecutors seek death in the future.

“If Florida, like other states, had required a binding, unanimous jury verdict before a death sentence could be returned, it would have imposed 70 percent fewer death sentences over the last five years”, said Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice. Timothy Lee Hurst was convicted in the slaying of his manager at a Pensacola Popeye’s restaurant.

Florida has since maintained that a jury’s advisory opinion to impose the death penalty is legal, allowing the judge to pick and choose aggravating factors that the jury may not have considered.

“A jury must determine the circumstances, the facts and the aggravating factors that lead to a death penalty, and not a judge”, FAMU law professor Jeremy Levitt said.

But the decision should not have been the judge’s, Sotomayor wrote.

Hurst v. Florida is one of several cases the court has heard or will hear this term challenging the way states carry their capital sentencing regimes – though none of them directly attack the constitutionality of the death penalty.

Until the ruling Tuesday, Florida judges had ultimate discretion on whether to impose the death penalty or life imprisonment.

“I don’t know what took them so long”, Palm Beach County Public Defender Carey Haughwout said of the opinion, adding that defense attorneys in Florida have been appealing death sentences under those grounds ever since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Arizona v. Ring.

“Time and subsequent cases have washed away the logic” of those cases, known as Spaziano and Hildwin, Sotomayor wrote. SCOTUS members include Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Justice Elena Kagan. At his 2001 trial, Bolin waived a jury’s sentencing recommendation. He said it “defies belief” that the jury would not have found the murder of Harrison heinous.

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

Other states are likely to be affected as well.

In its 8-1 ruling, the country’s highest court said Florida’s sentencing is flawed because judges are given too much power over prisoners’ fates.

To read the U.S. Supreme Court’s full opinion, visit its website.

“That process is going to remedy better justice and it’s going to prevent mistakes of the past”.

Tuesday’s decision, however, is limited to Florida and its unique system.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said her office is reviewing the ruling. And if that responsibility falls to the Legislature, which is in only session until mid-March, when will it get done?

With that issue resolved, the public defender said the lingering question is what happens next. Joe Negron, a Stuart Republican who will become Senate president in November and now chairs the committee responsible for criminal justice spending.

“There’s no way of knowing that”, said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center on whether the court had Hurst in mind during Bolin’s appeal, “since the case was decided so closely in proximity you’d think they probably were”.

Shearer, with the Orlando Catholic Diocese, said the ruling is about fairness.

“What’s important is this is a problem we can fix”. The sentence was upheld by the Florida Supreme Court.