Florida Legislature Passes Unconstitutional Bill that Mandates the Death Penalty for ​“Unauthorized Aliens”

On January 28, 2025, the Florida Legislature passed an immi­gra­tion bill that includes a pro­vi­sion man­dat­ing the auto­mat­ic impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty for ​“unau­tho­rized aliens” con­vict­ed of a cap­i­tal offense, despite long­stand­ing U.S. prece­dent and inter­na­tion­al law pro­hibit­ing manda­to­ry death sen­tences.. The bill was intro­duced dur­ing a short spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion called by Governor Ron DeSantis (pic­tured), leav­ing lit­tle to no time for pub­lic review: state sen­a­tors received the full text of the leg­is­la­tion just ten min­utes ahead of debate. Legislators acknowl­edged that the bill could face legal chal­lenges because of the manda­to­ry sen­tenc­ing pro­vi­sions, but at least one sen­a­tor, Randy Fine, expressed con­fi­dence the bill would sur­vive scruti­ny, not­ing in ​“this leg­is­la­ture we have cho­sen to pass things that we knew were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al at the time we passed them because we believed the Supreme Court would change their minds.” The Florida House and Senate both vot­ed in favor of the bill, send­ing it to the desk of Gov. DeSantis, who has pub­licly stat­ed he intends to veto the bill, because he found claus­es unre­lat­ed to the manda­to­ry death penal­ty pro­vi­sion ​“weak.”

As ear­ly as the 1830s, U.S. law­mak­ers began to move away from auto­mat­ic death penal­ty statutes, rec­og­niz­ing them as ​“undu­ly harsh and unwork­ably rigid.” By 1963, every state and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment had replaced auto­mat­ic, manda­to­ry death penal­ty laws with dis­cre­tionary jury sen­tenc­ing. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court halt­ed use of the death penal­ty when it acknowl­edged seri­ous con­cerns about the arbi­trary use of the death penal­ty in Furman v. Georgia. Just four years lat­er, the Court autho­rized the return of the death penal­ty with new pro­ce­dures that guid­ed the deci­sion-mak­ing of cap­i­tal juries. It also specif­i­cal­ly reject­ed manda­to­ry death sen­tences as a pos­si­ble answer to the con­cern of arbi­trari­ness in Woodson v. North Carolina (1976), hold­ing that a Constitutional sen­tenc­ing process rec­og­nizes the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of each indi­vid­ual, while manda­to­ry death sen­tences treat defen­dants as ​“a face­less, undifferentiated mass.”

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the legislature’s pas­sage of the bill, Maria DeLiberato, the Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said that ​“while Governor DeSantis has indi­cat­ed he will veto this ver­sion of the bill, it is clear that both he and the Florida leg­is­la­ture intend to make immi­gra­tion a pri­or­i­ty this ses­sion. The broad­er con­cern is that our law­mak­ers are sig­nal­ing their will­ing­ness to waste the State of Florida’s lim­it­ed crim­i­nal jus­tice resources defend­ing unen­force­able laws in favor of mak­ing polit­i­cal state­ments about the death penal­ty, instead of focus­ing on mean­ing­ful ways to strength­en Florida’s com­mu­ni­ties and make them safer.” Several state leg­is­la­tors expressed their con­cerns and dis­con­tent with this bill, includ­ing Representative Fentrice Driskell, who said ​“it’s the peo­ple of Florida who lose when we put pet­ty par­ti­san inter­ests ahead of their needs, for exam­ple, afford­abil­i­ty and low­er­ing prop­er­ty insurance costs.”