Florida Legislature Passes Bill Eliminating Non-Unanimous Jury Recommendations for Death Penalty

A Florida bill that would require the jury to make a unan­i­mous rec­om­men­da­tion for death before a judge may impose a death sen­tence will head to Governor Rick Scott for final approval, after both hous­es of the Florida leg­is­la­ture passed it by over­whelm­ing mar­gins. Senate Bill 280 passed unan­i­mous­ly (37 – 0) on March 9, and the cor­re­spond­ing House Bill 527 passed by a 112 – 3 vote on March 10. 

If signed by the gov­er­nor, the bill will bring Florida into com­pli­ance with the Florida Supreme Court’s rul­ings in Hurst v. State and Perry v. State in 2016. Hurst struck down Florida’s pri­or cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing statute, which had allowed judges to impose the death penal­ty if a major­i­ty of jurors rec­om­mend­ed death or to over­ride a jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion of life. Perry struck down an amend­ed ver­sion of the statute, which had per­mit­ted judges to impose a death sen­tence if 10 or more jurors recommended death. 

The Florida Supreme Court also ruled that the una­nim­i­ty require­ment would apply to death-row pris­on­ers whose direct appeals had been decid­ed after the United States Supreme Court’s June 2002 deci­sion in Ring v. Arizona, which held that cap­i­tal defen­dants had a right to a jury deter­mi­na­tion of all facts nec­es­sary to impose the death penal­ty. That deci­sion is expect­ed to over­turn approx­i­mate­ly 200 death sen­tences, while per­mit­ting a sim­i­lar num­ber of pris­on­ers whose direct appeals had already been com­plet­ed to be exe­cut­ed despite con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions in their cases. 

Until recent­ly, three states — Florida, Alabama, and Delaware — per­mit­ted judges to impose death sen­tences on the basis of non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death. Non-unan­i­mous cas­es account­ed for more than 20% of all death sen­tences in the U.S. from 2010 – 2015 and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly con­tributed to death-row exon­er­a­tions. In 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court struck down its state’s death penal­ty statute, hold­ing that death sen­tences based upon non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death were unconstitutional. 

The change to Florida’s law would leave Alabama as the only remain­ing state in which a judge may impose a death sen­tence based upon a non-unan­i­mous jury recommendation.