Sentencing Alternatives
,Dec 12, 2021
In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that death sentences based on non-unanimous jury recommendations for death violated the state and federal constitutions. The Florida legislature then amended Florida’s death-sentencing law to require a unan…
Arbitrariness
,Intellectual Disability
,Race
,Sep 13, 2022
An Alabama appeals court has upheld a fifth non-unanimous death sentence imposed on a death-row prisoner who has faced six capital sentencing trials for the same offense and was once found to be ineligible for the death penalty be…
Arbitrariness
,Jul 17, 2023
Florida’s new death sentencing law
Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Jun 02, 2023
Florida’s recent decision to allow death sentences without a unanimous jury recommendation increases the risk of executing an innocent person, according to conservative commentator Christian Schneider (pictured). In a May 25, 2023 column for Th…
Innocence
,Sentencing Alternatives
,DPIC Reports
,Mar 13, 2020
Capital sentencing schemes that permit judges to impose a death sentence despite the votes of one or more jurors for life create a heightened risk that an innocent person will be wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, according to a new
Mental Illness
,Jun 12, 2023
Duane Owen is scheduled to be executed in Florida on June 15, 2023. If it occurs, his execution will be the fourth execution in Florida this year, after a three year pause in executions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr. Owen was convicted in…
Recent Legislative Activity
,Feb 06, 2023
At the urging of Governor Ron DeSantis, bills have been introduced in the Florida House and Senate that would allow death sentences even when the jury cannot come to a unanimous verdict on the proper penalty. The proposed legislation would also pe…
Recent Legislative Activity
,Apr 18, 2023
Florida is poised to become the state with the nation’s lowest threshold for juries to recommend death sentences, after the state legislature passed a bill allowing a judge to impose death if at least eight out of twelve jurors agree. Most states,…
Innocence
,New Voices
,May 26, 2023
“[W]e have come over time to see the flaws in our nation’s justice system and to view the state’s death penalty laws in particular as legally and morally troubling,” wrote two former governors of Alabama in an op-ed for the W…
Sentencing Alternatives
,May 26, 2022
A Missouri judge has rejected the state’s first jury recommendation for a death sentence in nine years, and has instead re-sentenced former death-row prisoner Marvin D. Rice (pictured) to life without parole. …
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Sentencing Data
,Apr 11, 2019
The Missouri Supreme Court has ordered a new sentencing trial for Marvin D. Rice (pictured), a former sheriff’s deputy whose trial judge senten…
Sentencing Alternatives
,Mar 19, 2020
NEWS (3/19/20): Florida — The Florida Supreme Court has denied new sentencing hearings to two more death-row prisoners who were sentenced to death after non-unanimous sentencing recommendations by their juries. Relying on the cour…
Innocence
,Feb 15, 2023
Crosley Green was sentenced to death for murder in Florida in 1990 with an all-white non-unanimous jury. He was removed from death row in 2009 and resentenced to life in prison. He has always maintained his innocence and is now asking the U.S. …
United States Supreme Court
,Mar 11, 2020
Former Florida death-row prisoner Timothy Hurst (pictured), whose case led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Florida’s death-penalty statute in 2016 and spurred the elimination of non-unanimo…
