In a recent opin­ion address­ing sev­er­al pro­ce­dur­al issues regard­ing the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law, the Florida Supreme Court urged state leg­is­la­tors to require cap­i­tal jurors to be unan­i­mous in rec­om­mend­ing death sen­tences or at least in decid­ing what aggra­vat­ing fac­tors sup­port a death sen­tence. ​“The bot­tom line is that Florida is now the only state in the coun­try that allows the death penal­ty to be imposed even though the penal­ty-phase jury may deter­mine by a mere major­i­ty vote both whether aggra­va­tors exist and whether to rec­om­mend the death penal­ty.… The require­ment of a unan­i­mous ver­dict can only assist the cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing jury in reach­ing such a rea­soned deci­sion,” wrote Justice Raoul Cantero for the court.

Cantero also not­ed that many schol­ars and courts, includ­ing the U.S. Supreme Court, have con­clud­ed that unan­i­mous ver­dicts are impor­tant to the death sen­tenc­ing process. Currently in Florida, only judges can impose death sen­tences, but they are required by law to give great weight to rec­om­men­da­tions from juries. It takes a vote of 7 – 5 or greater to rec­om­mend death in a first-degree mur­der case. The only alter­na­tive is life in prison with­out parole. (Associated Press, October 12, 2005). In a 7 – 2 deci­sion in Ring v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a defen­dant has the right to have a jury deter­mine beyond a rea­son­able doubt that at least one aggra­vat­ing fac­tor exists to make him eli­gi­ble for the death penalty. 

See DPIC’s Ring v. Arizona Web page.

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