Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush Expresses Regrets Regarding His Experience with Capital Punishment: ​“I Was Very Uncomfortable With It”

In a July pod­cast episode from Deeper Dive with Dara Kam, for­mer Florida Governor Jeb Bush (pic­tured) spoke about his beliefs on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and his regrets about not hav­ing enough time to reform Florida’s death penal­ty process. Gov. Bush, who over­saw 21 exe­cu­tions dur­ing his eight years in office, said that ​“it’s one of those things that would prob­a­bly be unpop­u­lar to do, but fig­ur­ing out a way to reform the sys­tem giv­en the exist­ing laws that we have now, I think would be appro­pri­ate.” He added that in his ​“last year, [he] cer­tain­ly con­sid­ered it,” but ran out of time. Gov. Bush said that he per­son­al­ly believes the death penal­ty can be a deter­rent, but ​“the whole sys­tem has been so tan­gled up by court rul­ings that it’s not a deter­rent as it should be.”

Citing his reli­gious faith, Gov. Bush said that ​“there’s a moral impli­ca­tion, for sure, as a Catholic…it was very hard for me to be a part of the death penal­ty process, I was very uncom­fort­able with it.” Acknowledging that he had a duty to fol­low the law, he said he did just that. When asked if he thinks life impris­on­ment with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is a bet­ter pun­ish­ment, he said that it ​“is less expen­sive and it does cre­ate cer­tain­ty for fam­i­lies that have suffered…if you have a life in prison sen­tence, you know it’s done.” Gov. Bush also said he under­stands the argu­ments from peo­ple who oppose the death penal­ty and that a focus should be placed on final­i­ty for vic­tims’ families.

In dis­cussing recent changes to Florida’s death penal­ty law, Gov. Bush sup­ports requir­ing unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death sen­tences, rather than a major­i­ty. In 2023, Florida law­mak­ers, at the urg­ing of cur­rent Governor Ron DeSantis, passed leg­is­la­tion that allows for cap­i­tal juries to impose death sen­tences by a nonunan­i­mous rec­om­men­da­tion (8 – 4). His push for a change to the law came after a non-unan­i­mous jury in Nikolas Cruz’s case result­ed in a sen­tence of life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Mr. Cruz was tried for the 2018 shoot­ing deaths of 17 stu­dents and fac­ul­ty mem­bers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL.

Since tak­ing office in 2019, Gov. DeSantis has signed nine exe­cu­tions war­rants, six of which took place in 2023. He recent­ly sched­uled Loran Cole to be exe­cut­ed on August 29, 2024.