Delaware pub­lic defend­ers have filed a brief in the Delaware Supreme Court argu­ing that the state’s death sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. In their brief, the defend­ers describe ​“mul­ti­ple con­sti­tu­tion­al prob­lems” that they say ​“require Delaware’s death penal­ty scheme to be sub­stan­tial­ly restruc­tured.” These include sev­er­al pro­ce­dures that they say are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent 8 – 1 deci­sion in Hurst v. Florida. Delaware allows juries to ren­der non-unan­i­mous advi­so­ry sen­tences on the ques­tion of life or death, but also requires judges to make find­ings about the rel­a­tive weight of aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances. The Hurst deci­sion ​“requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact nec­es­sary to impose a sen­tence of death.” The fil­ing argues that in a sev­er­al states, the high­est courts and leg­is­la­tures have acknowl­edged that the Sixth Amendment also ​“requires the jury to deter­mine the pres­ence of aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances, as well as the weight of each.” The defend­ers’ plead­ing square­ly chal­lenges the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of allow­ing a death sen­tence based upon a non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion. Delaware, Alabama, and Florida are the only states that allow a judge to over­ride a jury’s sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion and impose a death sen­tence when the jury has rec­om­mend­ed life, and the only states that per­mit a judge to impose the death penal­ty after a non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion for death. But fol­low­ing the Hurst deci­sion, Florida has no valid pro­ce­dures in place to pur­sue cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing. The defend­ers argue that this demon­strates ​“a nation­wide con­sen­sus against non-unan­i­mous jury ver­dicts in cap­i­tal cas­es. No exist­ing state statute cur­rent­ly per­mits a non-unan­i­mous deter­mi­na­tion of aggra­vat­ing fac­tors, and only two, in Alabama and Delaware, per­mit a jury’s sen­tenc­ing deter­mi­na­tion to be less than unan­i­mous. That only two states per­mit non-unan­i­mous jury ver­dicts in cap­i­tal cas­es weighs heav­i­ly against its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty.” Delaware pros­e­cu­tors have 30 days to respond to the defense argu­ments. All death penal­ty pro­ceed­ings in Delaware remain on hold pend­ing the state court’s res­o­lu­tion of this issue.

(J. Reyes, ​“Public defend­ers: Death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al,” The News Journal, March 1, 2016.) See Arbitrariness and Sentencing.

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