Supreme Court strikes down Florida death sentence process

The 8-1 ruling was the latest blow to the death penalty, which has lost ground in the United States in recent years in terms of both the number of sentences and actual executions.

The Supreme Court has thrown out a verdict in Florida which sentenced Timothy Lee Hurst to death because the judge first decided he was eligible for the death penalty, rather than that decision being made by a jury.

“We hold this sentencing scheme unconstitutional”, wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who delivered the opinion for the majority of the court.

The ruling comes from the case of Timothy Lee Hurst, who a Pensacola Judge sentenced to die for the 1998 murder of a co-worker after a jury voted 7-5 in favor of a death sentence.

In Florida, judges can impose the death penalty even if the jury has not ruled unanimously or agreed on any aggravating circumstance.

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

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.

“I think this decision will put any other states that might be tempted to leaving capital sentences to judges, that that’s not okay under our constitution”, said Gorod. The court sentenced Hurst to death, but he was granted a new sentencing hearing on appeal.

Justice Samuel Alito was the sole dissenter in Tuesday’s ruling and disagreed that the Sixth Amendment requires juries to make specific findings authorizing a death sentence. A penalty-phase jury recommended that Hurst’s judge impose a death sentence. But Florida law did not require the jury to say how it voted on each factor. She said the court was overruling previous decisions upholding the state’s sentencing process.

There are 390 inmates on death row in the state right now.

Nationwide, Cassandra Stubbs, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project, predicted that the decision “represents another step on the inevitable road toward ending the death penalty” because of jurors’ decreasing willingness to impose death. He and ACLU leaders want Florida’s death sentences to be converted to life in prison. 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. “You’re not going to have someone’s life or death being determined exclusively on, perhaps, the emotions of a jury”.

It’s unclear whether the new ruling will apply retroactively to the hundreds of people on death row.

“The trial court performs what amounts, in practical terms, to a reviewing function”, Alito wrote. “Florida’s sentencing scheme, which required the judge alone to find the existence of an aggravating circumstance, is therefore unconstitutional”.

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