STUDIES: At Least 201 Florida Death Row Prisoners May Be Eligible for Resentencing, 134 Had Non-Unanimous Juries

A new study reports that at least 201 Florida death row pris­on­ers — includ­ing at least 134 whom judges sen­tenced to death after juries had returned non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions — may be eli­gi­ble for resen­tenc­ing hear­ings as a result of recent rul­ings by the United States and Florida Supreme Courts declar­ing the state’s death sen­tenc­ing practices unconstitutional. 

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s statute in Hurst v. Florida, rul­ing that it uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly denied defen­dants the right to have juries decide whether the pros­e­cu­tion had proven key facts nec­es­sary to impose the death penal­ty. Later in the year, in Hurst v. State, the Florida Supreme Court also struck down the statute for per­mit­ting judges to impose death sen­tences with­out a unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion for death. In a pair of rul­ings issued in December 2016, Asay v. State and Mosley v. State, the court applied that deci­sion to any defen­dant whose death sen­tence was final­ized after the U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing Ring v. Arizona, in 2002. 

The authors of the study, Michael Radelet (pic­tured), a soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and G. Ben Cohen, a cap­i­tal lit­i­ga­tor in New Orleans, Louisiana, cau­tion that the 134 non-unan­i­mous post-Ring death ver­dicts that they have iden­ti­fied ​“are not the only cas­es that may require resen­tenc­ing, as defen­dants may have dif­fer­ent claims aris­ing from oth­er con­sti­tu­tion­al defi­cien­cies in the Florida statutes.” Their study shows that ten coun­ties account for near­ly 60% of Florida’s death row, more than 60% of those sen­tenced to death since Ring, and 62% of the known non-unan­i­mous ver­dicts and will most heav­i­ly bear the cost of resen­tenc­ing these defendants. 

The coun­ties with the largest num­bers of affect­ed pris­on­ers are also among the 2% of U.S. coun­ties respon­si­ble for a major­i­ty of peo­ple on death row nation­wide. Duval County has 31 defen­dants who may be eli­gi­ble for resen­tenc­ing, of whom at least 26 had a non-unan­i­mous jury. The same is true of 11 of 12 affect­ed defen­dants from Miami-Dade County, 8 of 12 from Broward County, and 7 of 11 from Seminole County.

The authors point out that the con­sti­tu­tion­al fail­ures of Florida’s statute have been evi­dent for many years, and that ear­li­er acknowl­edge­ment of these prob­lems could have saved the state from the cost­ly resen­tenc­ing hear­ings it now faces: ​“The sig­nif­i­cant cost of resen­tenc­ing all of these indi­vid­u­als under a con­sti­tu­tion­al scheme was very pre­dictable at the time of Ring in 2002, and was also fore­seen by at least some experts who exam­ined the post-Furman statute that was enact­ed in 1972.” They con­clude that ​“In 2017, the Florida leg­is­la­ture will need to make changes in the Florida death penal­ty statute that were pre­dictable when the statute was first passed in 1972, and inevitable when the U.S. Supreme Court released Ring v. Arizona in 2002. Finally, they will need to acknowl­edge that Ring has rung.”