Florida Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments Challenging Non-Unanimity Sentencing Standard

On December 12, 2024, the Florida Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments in the case of Michael James Jackson, who is chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Florida’s 2023 law that allows for non-unan­i­mous jury death sen­tences. Mr. Jackson is rep­re­sent­ed by the ACLU, who argued that the Florida law is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the Supreme Court’s 2020 rul­ing in Ramos v. Louisiana, which struck down non-unan­i­mous crim­i­nal con­vic­tions. According to the ACLU’s brief, Florida’s law has the same neg­a­tive effects for death penal­ty sen­tenc­ing as it does for crim­i­nal con­vic­tions in that it ​“per­mits essen­tial fact find­ings need­ed for death to be decid­ed non-unan­i­mous­ly and removes the ulti­mate deci­sion from the jury[.]” 

In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court, in Hurst v. Florida, acknowl­edged the require­ment for juror una­nim­i­ty. Subsequently, Mr. Jackson was among those on Florida’s death row who were award­ed new sen­tenc­ing hear­ings. His ini­tial resen­tenc­ing was sched­uled for September 2019, but was derailed first by Hurricane Dorian, and then by the glob­al Coronavirus pan­dem­ic, which shut­tered courts across the state of Florida through 2021. Mr. Jackson’s resen­tenc­ing hear­ing was fur­ther delayed by his request to severe his case from co-defen­dant, Alan Wade. Wade was award­ed a life sen­tence in 2022. 

In the mean­time, the Florida leg­is­la­ture passed a new non-una­nim­i­ty law, SB 450, which took effect in April 2023. At that time, Mr. Jackson was one of 40 indi­vid­u­als await­ing resen­tenc­ing. On May 25, 2023, the jury rec­om­mend­ed, again in an 8 – 4 vote, that Mr. Jackson be resen­tenced to death for the 2005 mur­ders of James ​“Reggie” and Carol Sumner. A judge for­mal­ly imposed the death sen­tence in August 2023. 

Just two states, Florida and Alabama, allow for the impo­si­tion of death by non-unan­i­mous juries. Earlier this year, an ami­cus brief, or friend-of-the-court brief, sub­mit­ted by Black-led orga­ni­za­tions and Black law­mak­ers in the Florida Supreme Court argued that this change to the state’s death penal­ty process vio­lates cap­i­tal defen­dants’ rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Melanie Kalmanson, an attor­ney with Quarles & Brady LLP, wrote on behalf of the coali­tion that resen­tenc­ing hear­ings have relied on ​“an arbi­trary line-draw­ing based on the date” that sen­tenc­ing was finalized.