Amnesty International Issues Report on the Death Penalty in Florida

A new report by Amnesty International says Florida​’s approach to redress­ing the near­ly 400 uncon­sti­tu­tion­al non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences imposed in the state has deep­ened its sta­tus as an out­lier on death-penal­ty issues by ​“add[ing] an extra lay­er of arbi­trari­ness to [the state’s] already dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and error-prone cap­i­tal justice system.” 

The report, released on August 23, 2018, exam­ines the impact of Florida’s reponse to U.S. and Florida Supreme Court rul­ings in Hurst v. Florida and Hurst v. State that over­turned the state’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing statute. That response, Amnesty said, would per­mit the exe­cu­tion of more than 170 pris­on­ers whom the state acknowl­edges were sen­tenced to death under uncon­sti­tu­tion­al sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures. Executing those pris­on­ers, Amnesty wrote, will vio­late ​“well-estab­lished” inter­na­tion­al human rights law requir­ing that any per­son ​“con­vict­ed of a cap­i­tal offence must ben­e­fit when a change of law fol­low­ing charge or con­vic­tion impos­es a lighter penal­ty for that crime.” 

In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court struck down a state prac­tice that per­mit­ted judges to impose a death sen­tence despite the rec­om­men­da­tions of one or more jurors that a life sen­tence should be imposed. However, the court then declined to enforce that rul­ing in cas­es that had com­plet­ed direct appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court announced in Ring v. Arizona in June 2002 that cap­i­tal defen­dants had a right to have a jury decide all facts that were nec­es­sary to impose the death penalty. 

The Amnesty International report described the Florida court’s refusal to enforce the con­sti­tu­tion in cas­es in which it acknowl­edged that con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions had occurred as ​“fear of too much jus­tice.” ​“Finality won out over fair­ness when the Florida Supreme Court decid­ed the Hurst retroac­tiv­i­ty issue,” the report said. 

The report high­lights the cas­es of pris­on­ers with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, those with ​“actu­al or bor­der­line intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty,” youth­ful offend­ers with back­grounds of severe depri­va­tion and abuse who were con­demned in uncon­sti­tu­tion­al sen­tenc­ing tri­als, and the wrong­ful impact of race on sen­tenc­ing deci­sions, and argues that Florida’s refusal to review these cas­es is not only arbi­trary, but also vio­lates inter­na­tion­al human rights norms and the con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ple that the death penal­ty is sup­posed to be reserved for ​“the worst of the worst” cases. 

The report also dis­cuss­es Florida’s long his­to­ry of employ­ing uncon­sti­tu­tion­al death-penal­ty prac­tices that were lat­er over­turned by the United States Supreme Court. It spot­lights the case of James Hitchcock, who was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death four times for a crime he com­mit­ted at age 20. The first three times, his death sen­tence was over­turned, includ­ing a land­mark U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing strik­ing down Florida’s statu­to­ry restric­tion on the mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence the sen­tenc­ing judge and jury could con­sid­er. The fourth time, he was sen­tenced to death after a non-unan­i­mous jury vote, but was denied review of that constitutional violation. 

“The death penal­ty is no way to impart jus­tice,” said Amnesty’s Americas Director, Erika Guevara Rosas. ​“Florida and all oth­er states where the death penal­ty is still in use must impose imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­ums on exe­cu­tions until they can end this cru­el prac­tice once and for all.” 

In the mean­time, the report urges all offi­cials to ​“ensure an end to the use of the death penal­ty against any­one with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty or men­tal dis­abil­i­ty,” ​“ensure that all cap­i­tal case deci­sion mak­ers are made ful­ly aware of the mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence sur­round­ing youth and emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal imma­tu­ri­ty,” and ​“facil­i­tate a pub­lic edu­ca­tion cam­paign to raise aware­ness across Florida of the costs, risks and flaws asso­ci­at­ed with the state’s death penalty.”

Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara J. Pariente dis­sent­ed from the state court’s par­tial retroac­tiv­i­ty rul­ing, writ­ing, “[r]eliability is the linch­pin of Eighth Amendment jurispru­dence, and a death sen­tence imposed with­out a unan­i­mous jury ver­dict for death is inher­ent­ly unre­li­able.” Justice Fred Lewis also crit­i­cized the court for ​“tumbl[ing] down the dizzy­ing rab­bit hole of unten­able line draw­ing” and described the line the court chose to draw as ​“deter­mi­na­tive [but] arbitrary.”