Dumping Florida’s death penalty — why is anyone surprised?
Florida’s death penalty was declared unconstitutional last January by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was only a matter of time. You see, there was this little matter called the Sixth Amendment of U.S. Constitution that got in the way.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to trial by jury. The court ruled that any fact that authorizes the government to sentence someone to death has to be found by a jury. Florida’s death-penalty scheme allowed judges to find those facts. The jury’s role was only to make a recommendation.
As the court stated, “a recommendation is not enough.”
So, the Florida Legislature passed a new law that required the jury to unanimously find the facts necessary to condemn a man to death, but only required the sentence to be “recommended” by a vote of 10 to 2. Unanimous juries have been required in Florida at least since 1838. This month, the Florida Supreme Court held the new statute to violate both the state and federal constitutions and required unanimous jury verdicts in death-penalty cases.
The legislative reaction was predictable. The next speaker of the Florida House of Representatives called the ruling “a miscarriage of justice” and “dangerous to our state.” Neither statement is correct. The recent court decisions were not authored by a bunch of “liberal, activist judges.” Justice Antonin Scalia, the field marshal of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, led the charge toward requiring compliance with the Sixth Amendment.
The Legislature should not have been surprised about the problems with Florida’s death penalty. Legislators had years of forewarning. The first case that required juries to find all of the facts necessary to impose an enhanced sentence (such as the death penalty) was decided in 2000.
Judges and constitutional scholars have been warning the Legislature for years that Florida’s death penalty was flawed — all to no avail. Meanwhile, 47 people were executed under an unconstitutional law. The last execution took place two weeks before the Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty. Oscar Ray Bolin was executed on a warrant issued by Florida’s governor, who knew that the Supreme Court was about to rule, and allowed the execution to take place anyway. It is a little late for an apology.
No doubt, the Legislature will take up the death penalty next year and will listen to the same people who provided misguided advice in the past before fashioning yet another unconstitutional death-penalty law. The solution is simple. It is as easy as looking north over the Georgia boarder and adopting Georgia’s death-penalty scheme. But that is not the way things are done in Tallahassee.