Report Finds 74% of Florida Death Row Inmates Had Non-Unanimous Death Verdicts

Florida​’s death row would be three-quar­ters small­er if the state fol­lowed the prac­tice of all but two oth­er states and required that a jury unan­i­mous­ly agree that a death sen­tence can be imposed before a defen­dant can be sen­tenced to death. Alabama and Delaware also per­mit judges to impose death sen­tences fol­low­ing non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death. 

After an 18-month inves­ti­ga­tion into the cas­es of Florida’s 390 death-row pris­on­ers, The Villages Daily Sun found that judges had imposed death sen­tences 287 times (74%) after jurors had split on whether to rec­om­mend death. The paper found that 43% of the state’s death-row pris­on­ers would have received life sen­tences if, as is required in Alabama, the state required a ​“super­ma­jor­i­ty” vote of jurors (10 or more) before the jury could recommend death. 

Florida’s high rate of death sen­tenc­ing has dri­ven up the costs of hous­ing the state’s death row, which state offi­cials have esti­mat­ed at between $8.7 and $9.6 mil­lion annu­al­ly. The state’s sen­tenc­ing scheme was recent­ly struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida because its statute per­mit­ted the judge, rather than the jury, to deter­mine whether the pros­e­cu­tion had proven ​“aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances” that make a cap­i­tal defen­dant eli­gi­ble for a death sentence. 

Although Delaware, like Florida, allows a rec­om­men­da­tion for death by a sim­ple major­i­ty of the jury (7 out of 12), it first requires the jury to unan­i­mous­ly find the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors that jus­ti­fy a death sentence. 

Florida’s next sched­uled exe­cu­tion is that of Michael Ray Lambrix, set for February 11. The Florida Supreme Court has ordered brief­ing in Lambrix’s case on how the Hurst deci­sion affects his case and whether it should be applied retroac­tive­ly to oth­er cas­es. The Court has sched­uled oral argu­ment for February 2.

(K. Sartoris, ​“Redefining Justice,” The Villages Daily Sun, January 10, 2016; C. Geidner, ​“Florida High Court To Hold Arguments In February On Effect Of Death Penalty Ruling,” BuzzFeed, January 15, 2016.) See Sentencing and Arbitrariness.