On May 22, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Florida​’s peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari in Florida v. Hurst, refus­ing to dis­turb a deci­sion of the Florida Supreme Court that had declared it uncon­sti­tu­tion­al for judges to impose death sen­tences after one or more jurors in the case had vot­ed for life. The rul­ing effec­tive­ly ends Florida pros­e­cu­tors’ efforts to reverse the state court rul­ing — which could over­turn approx­i­mate­ly 200 death sen­tences in the state — requir­ing that cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing juries unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend death before the tri­al judge may impose a death sen­tence. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi had asked the high court to con­sid­er the Florida deci­sion, argu­ing that the state court’s ​“expan­sive read­ing” of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 deci­sion in Hurst v. Florida was erro­neous. In January 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing scheme, say­ing, ​“The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact nec­es­sary to impose a sen­tence of death.” The Florida leg­is­la­ture rewrote the law to require that juries unan­i­mous­ly find at least one aggra­vat­ing fac­tor, mak­ing a case eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence, and rais­ing the thresh­old for a jury rec­om­men­da­tion of a death sen­tence from a sim­ple 7 – 5 major­i­ty to at least 10 of the 12 jurors. The Florida Supreme Court held in October 2016 that the new law vio­lat­ed both the state and fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tions because it did not require jury una­nim­i­ty before the court could impose a death sen­tence. Most of the 386 pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on Florida’s death row were sen­tenced to death in vio­la­tion of Hurst. However, the state court has ruled that it will not apply its deci­sion to cas­es that had com­plet­ed the direct appeal process before June 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court announced that the Sixth Amendment gives cap­i­tal defen­dants the right to have a jury find all facts that are nec­es­sary to impose the death penal­ty in their case. The Florida Supreme Court has already ordered more than a dozen new sen­tenc­ing hear­ings in cas­es involv­ing non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death, and local pros­e­cu­tors are faced with the prospect of a flood of expen­sive retri­als in cas­es in which one or more jurors have already reject­ed the death penal­ty. Dave Davis, who rep­re­sent­ed Hurst, said “’[p]rosecutors are going to have to decide is it worth the effort to try to get death again. They’re going to have to exam­ine their evi­dence … and decide what the like­li­hood is that they’re going to get 12 jurors to decide death.”

(M. Van Sickler, ​“SCOTUS won’t hear Bondi appeal on death penal­ty,” Tampa Bay Times, May 22, 2017.) See U.S. Supreme Court.

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