Supreme Court Strikes Down Florida “Jury Recommendation” Death Sentencing Scheme

By an 8-1 ruling, the justices said Florida’s sentencing procedure is flawed because juries play only an advisory role in recommending death while the judge can reach a different decision.

The United States Supreme Court, in an emphatic ruling Tuesday, declared Florida’s death penalty sentencing scheme to be a violation of the Sixth Amendment.

The court ruled in the case of Timothy Lee Hurst, who was sentenced to death for the May 1998 murder of a Popeye’s restaurant manager. After concluding that Hurst was not mentally disabled and that aggravating circumstances outweighed any mitigating factors, the trial judge imposed a sentence of death.

Florida is one of three states in the country that do not demand a unanimous jury verdict in death penalty cases.

But Sotomayor ruled that Hurst was hurt by the state’s system, since the jury never clearly found the aggravating circumstances required for a death sentence.

“The Sixth Amendment protects a defendant’s right to an impartial jury”, Sotomayor stated.

Barry University and Florida A&M University law professors say this latest Supreme Court ruling does not abolish the death penalty in Florida. The court sentenced Hurst to death, but he was granted a new sentencing hearing on appeal.

Mr Dunham added: “Florida’s death sentencing scheme has various problems”. She said she didn’t now what impact it would have on the hundreds of inmates currently now on Death Row.

The scheme mandates separate sentencing proceeding to determine whether the defendant should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.

How successful those potential challenges will be depends on whether the new ruling on Mr Hurst’s case will apply retroactively to other people who were sentenced to death. Florida is the only state requiring a simple majority from a jury, and one of just three states in which a jury vote for death does not have to be unanimous.

“Each case will probably have to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis to see how it affects them”, Levitt said, “and how their defense attorneys may want to use this case to make a case that the death penalty was wrongfully imposed on them”.

Sotomayor noted that “Any fact that “expose[s] the defendant to a greater punishment than that authorized by the jury’s guilty verdict” is an “element” that must be submitted to a jury”.

Justice Samuel Alito cast the lone dissenting vote, saying Florida juries had more power than the majority was acknowledging. The high court did what the governor and legislators are required by their oaths of office to do – and it sent a signal that Florida’s practices, long an outlier, will remain in the public eye.

The court’s ruling was predicated on its precedent in the 2002 case of Ring v. Arizona.

Bryan Stevenson, director of the Alabama legal advocacy group Equal Justice Initiative, said Alabama’s system is identical to Florida’s in most respects and could be affected. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an email statement that the state will be making some changes to its death-sentencing ruling, per the Associated Press.