Florida Legislature Passes Bill Requiring Agreement of 10 Jurors Before Judge May Impose Death Sentence

UPDATE: Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill into law on March 7. Previously: The Florida leg­is­la­ture passed a bill on March 3 to restruc­ture its death penal­ty statute in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Hurst v. Florida, which declared the state’s death penal­ty pro­ce­dures uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The bill mod­i­fies Florida’s prac­tice of per­mit­ting judges to impose death sen­tences with­out the unan­i­mous agree­ment of jurors by requir­ing that at least ten jurors rec­om­mend death before the judge may impose a death penal­ty. It also direct­ly address­es Hurst by requir­ing that jurors unan­i­mous­ly find any aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances that the pros­e­cu­tion seeks to prove to make the defen­dant eli­gi­ble for the death penalty. 

Previously, Florida judges made the deter­mi­na­tion whether the pros­e­cu­tion had proven aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances that made the defen­dant eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, and the statute per­mit­ted the judge to impose death based upon a sim­ple major­i­ty rec­om­men­da­tion or, in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, when the jury had rec­om­mend­ed life imprisonment. 

The new 10 – 2 require­ment match­es the stan­dard applied in Alabama. Along with Delaware — which per­mits the court to impose death after a sim­ple major­i­ty rec­om­men­da­tion by the jury — these states stand alone in the coun­try in allow­ing a death sen­tence after a jury’s non-unan­i­mous sentencing recommendation. 

Delaware and Alabama still per­mit judi­cial over­ride. Delaware’s sys­tem is cur­rent­ly under review by that state’s high­est court, and on March 3, an Alabama cir­cuit court judge declared that state’s sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.