A sec­ond Florida tri­al court has ruled that the state’s new death penal­ty statute is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. On June 9, Hillsborough County Judge Samantha Ward barred pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing death against Michael Edward Keetley, say­ing that the state’s death penal­ty statute vio­lat­ed the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Judge Ward said that the Florida leg­is­la­ture’s changes to the sen­tenc­ing law after the U.S. Supreme Court had declared the old statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in Hurst v. Florida, cre­at­ed an addi­tion­al set of con­sti­tu­tion­al prob­lems. Hurst held that the Florida sen­tenc­ing statute imper­mis­si­bly per­mit­ted the judge, rather than the jury, to deter­mine whether the pros­e­cu­tion had proven each fact nec­es­sary to impose the death penal­ty. In response to Hurst, the leg­is­la­ture passed a new law that per­mit­ted the court to impose a death sen­tence only if the jury unan­i­mous­ly found at least one aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance that would make the defen­dant eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty and then rec­om­mend­ed a death sen­tence by a vote of at least 10 – 2 after deter­min­ing that the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance were suf­fi­cient­ly seri­ous to jus­ti­fy a death sen­tence and out­weighed any mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances. Judge Ward said that, under the new sen­tenc­ing scheme, the jury’s weigh­ing of aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances con­sti­tut­ed a fact-find­ing nec­es­sary before a death sen­tence could be imposed. She wrote, ​“it defies log­ic, and the dic­tates of [the Sixth Amendment], to have the jury find one of the pre­req­ui­sites unan­i­mous­ly and beyond a rea­son­able doubt (that at least one aggra­vat­ing fac­tor exists), but not the oth­er two pre­req­ui­sites (that suf­fi­cient aggra­va­tors exist and that they out­weigh the mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances). Hurst specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed ‘[t]he Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact nec­es­sary to impose a sen­tence of death.’ ” Judge Ward is the sec­ond Florida judge to find the new statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al: one month ear­li­er, on May 9, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch also struck down the law, rul­ing that the por­tion of the statute per­mit­ting the court to impose the death penal­ty with­out a unan­i­mous jury vote for death vio­lates the state constitution. 

(State of Florida v. Michael Edward Keetley, Case No. 10-CF-018429, Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court for Hillsborough County, Florida.) See Sentencing.

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