TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Supreme Court of Florida could rule as early as Thursday on the fate of nearly 400 death row inmates after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last January that the way in which death sentences are handed down in the state is unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Florida's method is unconstitutional because the jury doesn't have the final say.
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The first question facing Florida courts is what to do with the 388 people on death row. Jacksonville lawyer Richard Kuritz, representing one inmate, argued in June that they should all automatically be resentenced to life in prison.
"Absolutely, because when we start drawing a line, that's where the problem is going to be is because the statute has been declared unconstitutional," Kuritz said. "The sentencing scheme, well, it's the same scheme we've been using since the reinstatement of the death penalty case."
The second question facing the court is whether the state's new death sentencing law, which lawmakers passed last spring, goes far enough because it requires 10 of the 12 jurors to agree on a death sentence.
Former Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero was in court this week lecturing on the death penalty. He wrote a decade ago that that Florida must adopt a unanimous jury if it wanted to continue to impose death sentences.
"But the Legislature refused to do it, and I think the law has evolved since then, and I think the time has come," Cantero said. "I don't think 10-2 repairs the deficiencies in the statute."
No matter what the court decides, it's likely to face multiple appeals that could take a long time.
Without the 10-2 compromise, lawmakers said there would be no death penalty at all. In the end, not requiring a unanimous jury might have the same result.