Conservative Commentator Warns of Dangers of Non-Unanimous Death Sentences

Florida’s recent deci­sion to allow death sen­tences with­out a unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion increas­es the risk of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son, accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Christian Schneider (pic­tured). In a May 25, 2023 col­umn for The National Review, Schneider argues that con­ser­v­a­tives should oppose the law that allows a death sen­tence to be imposed when only eight jurors agree.

“For every case in which guilt is a fore­gone con­clu­sion, there are many oth­ers in which the facts are mud­di­er. And these cas­es can lead the gov­ern­ment to exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple,” Schneider writes. Florida has more death-row exon­er­a­tions than any oth­er state, with 30, and near­ly all of those cas­es involved non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions. Schneider explains why he thinks non-una­nim­i­ty is not prag­mat­ic, even for sup­port­ers of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: ​“It would seem that for Floridians who want­ed to keep cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment on the books, it would be shrewd to have the high­est pos­si­ble jury stan­dard, because the quick­est way for a state to lose the death penal­ty is for more inno­cent peo­ple to be fast-tracked to the electric chair.” 

He goes on to link his argu­ment to grow­ing con­cerns among Trump sup­port­ers about the legal sys­tem, writ­ing, ​“To put it in MAGA terms, the same crim­i­nal-jury process that many Republicans think unjust­ly turned January 6 defen­dants into ​‘polit­i­cal pris­on­ers’ can also be unjust­ly used to end people’s lives. And in Florida, it will be much eas­i­er to do so, with no return pol­i­cy if some­one is unjust­ly exe­cut­ed.” He con­cludes, “[T]hose con­cerned about gov­ern­ment abuse should be trou­bled by the relax­ing of the con­straints that keep gov­ern­ments from exer­cis­ing their most seri­ous pow­er: the abil­i­ty to kill people.”