Legislative leaders say death-penalty law won’t change

TALLAHASSEE

Top Republicans in the Florida Senate said a unanimous jury should remain a requirement to sentence someone to death, despite a ruling last week by the Florida Supreme Court that said it was not mandatory under the U.S. Constitution.

“I don’t think we’re going to take any steps in the Florida Senate to change or address that,” Senate President Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, said Wednesday afternoon.

The senator who has led state policy on the death penalty in the past, Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, agreed.

“Death is different. It’s an appropriate standard and it puts us in line with the norms of today,” he said. “Florida is not an outlier anymore, so it’s appropriate where we are.”

The Florida Supreme Court’s ruling did not affect current state law, which requires a unanimous jury to sentence someone to death. Every state that has the death penalty, except Alabama, has that standard.

But last week’s ruling opened the door for the Legislature to change the law, if it wished.

The ruling represented a major reversal of a 2016 ruling also made by the Florida Supreme Court, albeit with several different — and more liberal — justices. Back then, the court ruled that Florida’s deathpenalty law, which at the time did not require a unanimous jury and allowed the judge to make the final determination on death, was unconstitutional. The Legislature then changed state law as a result.

Last week’s decision, however, says the previous court “got it wrong,” and that a unanimous jury is only necessary to determine if a defendant should be eligible for the death penalty. To be eligible, a jury must unanimously find so-called “aggravating factors,” such as if the crime were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” or committed against a child under 12.

“It is no small matter for one Court to conclude that a predecessor Court has clearly erred,” the majority opinion of four justices stated. But, “in this case we cannot escape the conclusion.”

Although no leaders in the Florida House have called for state law to be changed back in the wake of the decision, they have not strongly ruled it out.

Asked for a response to last week’s overturn, House Speaker José Oliva, R-Miami Lakes, only noted in a statement that the ruling did not change current law. And Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, who’s next in line to be speaker for the 2021 session, would only say that lawmakers will “consider” what to do next.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has not weighed in or responded to three Herald/Times requests to his office for comments since last last week’s ruling.