Florida Holds Hearing On Capital Sentencing As Experts Urge Reform

In an op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel, former Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero (pictured) and ABA Death Penalty Assessment Team member Mark Schlakman call on the Florida legislature to repair the constitutional violations in Florida’s capital sentencing scheme. The U.S. Supreme Court found in Hurst v. Florida that the state’s sentencing process violates the Sixth Amendment because a jury does not unanimously find the aggravating factors that justify a death sentence. Cantero and Schlakman urge the legislature to enact legislation to “require unanimity for findings of aggravators and recommendations of death.” Such a measure has the support of the American Bar Association, which highlighted Florida’s sentencing scheme as an area of “critical concern” in a 2006 report and passed a resolution in 2015 urging all states to adopt unanimity in capital sentencing. At a Florida Senate Criminal Justice Committee hearing on January 27, public defenders, retired judges, and death penalty experts testified in favor of requiring jury unanimity in order to recommend a death sentence, saying that such a change would prevent further constitutional challenges. Florida prosecutors also testified, asking legislators to require unanimous findings of aggravating factors, and at least nine jurors to recommend a death sentence. Currently, Florida is one of just three states, along with Alabama and Delaware, that does not require a unanimous jury to impose a death sentence.

(R. Cantero and M. Schlackman, “Lawmakers must reform Florida’s death penalty,” Orlando Sentinel, January 21, 2016; S. Bousquet, “Florida experts offer fixes to death penalty law,” Miami Herald, January 27, 2016.) See Sentencing and U.S. Supreme Court.