On November 13, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review sev­en death-penal­ty cas­es in which Florida courts had upheld death sen­tences imposed with uncon­sti­tu­tion­al sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures. The Court’s deci­sion not to hear the sev­en Florida cas­es prompt­ed opin­ions from three jus­tices that high­light the deep sub­stan­tive and pro­ce­dur­al divide in the Court’s approach to capital cases.

In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled in Hurst v. Florida that Florida’s sen­tenc­ing scheme vio­lat­ed the Sixth Amendment right to tri­al by jury because the judge, rather than the jury, was giv­en the author­i­ty to find all facts that could sub­ject the defen­dant to a pos­si­ble death sen­tence. The Florida Supreme Court sub­se­quent­ly lim­it­ed enforce­ment of that deci­sion to cas­es in which juries did not reach a unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion and pris­on­ers whose ini­tial appeals were decid­ed after the U.S. Supreme Court decid­ed a relat­ed case, Ring v. Arizona, in June 2002. The Florida courts have upheld every death sen­tence in which a jury unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed the death penal­ty, say­ing that any vio­la­tions of Hurst in those cas­es were ​“harm­less.” The U.S. Supreme Court has now refused to review 84 Florida cas­es in which death sen­tences were imposed under pro­ce­dures that vio­lat­ed Hurst.

In Reynolds v. Florida, Justices Stephen Breyer, Clarence Thomas, and Sonia Sotomayor clashed about the denial of review to pris­on­ers who chal­lenged the Florida Supreme Court prac­tice of find­ing Hurst error harm­less. In a ​“state­ment respect­ing the denial of cer­tio­rari,” Justice Breyer high­light­ed issues present in the 84 Florida cas­es that under­score the Court’s need to review the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a whole: ​“uncon­scionably long delays that cap­i­tal defen­dants must endure as they await exe­cu­tion,” the ques­tion of whether Hurst should be applied to all Florida cas­es, and ​“whether the Eighth Amendment requires a jury rather than a judge to make the ulti­mate deci­sion to sen­tence a defen­dant to death.” Ultimately, he con­clud­ed, “[r]ather than attempt­ing to address the flaws in piece­meal fash­ion, … it would be wis­er to recon­sid­er the root cause of the prob­lem — the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty itself.” Justice Thomas sharply dis­agreed. In an opin­ion con­cur­ring with the denial of cer­tio­rari, he focused heav­i­ly on the grue­some cir­cum­stances of the mur­ders for which the pris­on­ers had been sen­tenced to die and said that the delays in the sys­tem are ​“a rea­son to car­ry out the death penal­ty soon­er, not to decline to impose it.”

Justice Sotomayor dis­sent­ed from the denial of cer­tio­rari. Voicing her con­cerns about the fair­ness of the sen­tenc­ing process, she wrote, ​“it is this Court’s duty to ensure that all defen­dants, even those who have com­mit­ted the most heinous crimes, receive a sen­tence that is the result of a fair process.” Contrary to the Court’s require­ment that death-penal­ty juries ​“view their task as the seri­ous one of deter­min­ing whether a spe­cif­ic human being should die at the hands of the State,” Sotomayor wrote, the jurors in the Florida cas­es ​“were repeat­ed­ly instruct­ed that their role was mere­ly advi­so­ry.” The Florida Supreme Court’s treat­ment of those advi­so­ry rec­om­men­da­tions as legal­ly bind­ing, she wrote, ​“rais­es sub­stan­tial Eighth Amendment concerns.”

In addi­tion to Michael Gordon Reynolds, the Court denied review to death-row pris­on­ers Jesse Guardado; Lenard James Philmore; Michael Anthony Tanzi; Quawn M. Franklin; Norman Mearle Grim; and Ray Lamar Johnston.

(Barbara Leonard, Florida Death-Penalty Cases Trigger Diverging High Court Opinions, Courthouse News Service, November 13, 2018; Jordan S. Rubin, Death Penalty Denials Highlight Supreme Court Splits, Bloomberg News, November 13, 2018; In Rejecting Florida Appeals, US Supreme Court Justices Debate Future Of Death Penalty, CBS Miami, November 13, 2018.) See U.S. Supreme Court and Sentencing.

Citation Guide