The US supreme court announced on Tuesday that Florida’s death penalty sentencing system is unconstitutional, in a ruling that could spark challenges from hundreds of death row prisoners and reignite the national debate about capital punishment.
In an eight-to-one decision, the supreme court justices declared that Florida cannot legally continue its habit of sentencing a person to death on the word of a judge rather than a jury.
The court ordered a new sentencing hearing for murderer Timothy Hurst, who stabbed a co-worker to death in a Popeye’s restaurant in Pensacola in 1998.
Florida is breaching a defendant’s sixth amendment right to have their ultimate fate decided by a jury, when the death penalty is involved, the court ruled.
“This is yet another significant moment in the long, slow death rattle of the use of capital punishment in America,” Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, told the Guardian.
“There are both conservatives and liberals on the supreme court who, no matter what they think of the death penalty in principle, believe that the sixth amendment requires a jury to be involved in the ultimate decision on death, and that is critical here,” he added.
In Florida’s death penalty system, a jury makes a recommendation to the judge at sentencing about whether it supports execution. For a defendant to get the death penalty rather than life in prison there must be aggravating facts in the case.
In Florida, the judge considers the jury’s recommendation but then decides alone whether there are aggravating facts that warrant the death penalty.
Opponents have long believed that gives excessive power to the judge. The supreme court agreed with that argument in a 2002 decision about the judge and jury system in Arizona and has now ruled similarly for Florida.
In the majority opinion, Sotomayor wrote: “The sixth amendment protects a defendant’s right to an impartial jury. This right required Florida to base Timothy Hurst’s death sentence on a jury’s verdict, not a judge’s fact-finding.”
Sotomayor added that the way Florida’s sentencing system requires the judge to “find the existence of an aggravating circumstance” is unconstitutional. Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissenter.
The lower courts and, most likely, also the state legislature, will now have to rewrite the capital punishment statute in Florida and future death sentences will have to be decided by a jury.
It is not yet clear how the ruling will affect those, other than Hurst, already awaiting execution in Florida.
In 1998, Hurst was a junior worker at a Popeye’s in Pensacola when he attacked Cynthia Harrison, 28, who was only 4ft 7in tall and had battled a number of physical disabilities to rise to the post of assistant manager. He bound her then stabbed her 60 times before stuffing her body in the restaurant freezer and fleeing with about $2,000 in takings.
Hurst could have his death sentence overturned or it could be reconfirmed if a future court decides there was still “overwhelming evidence” of aggravating facts in the case.
Either way he will embark on new hearings and experts believe many of the 400 prisoners currently on death row in Florida now have scope to argue for fresh appeals against their sentence.
Berman also pointed out that neighboring Alabama also uses the system of a judge having the last word on a death sentence, which could have serious implications for its future process and the fate of the 195 prisoners on death row in that state.
Between them, Florida and Alabama have about a fifth of the prisoners waiting on death row in the US.
Although the ongoing controversy over the chemicals used in lethal injections has been a more evocative challenge to the appropriateness of capital punishment in the US, Tuesday’s ruling could have greater implications, Berman believes.
“No one gets off death row because the state can’t find the drugs to inject them with, but today’s ruling could be used to get people off death row and make it harder to send people there in the first place,” he said.
About six in 10 Americans still support the death penalty.
But Berman said rulings such as the latest one from the supreme court “move public opinion” and, in an election year, that could prove even more relevant. The supreme court has several other potentially significant death penalty cases on its docket this term in which the justices have not yet issued a ruling.
In November Nebraska voters will consider whether to reinstate the death penalty there after repealing it in May 2015.
And the California ballot will ask voters there if they want to abolish the death penalty in the state with the largest death row, at 746 inmates.
It remains to be seen if presidential candidates, especially Florida politicians Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, will bring up the supreme court ruling on the campaign trail.
Bush, who gave the nod to 21 executions while governor of the state, said recently he was conflicted about the death penalty.
Tuesday’s ruling will now see legal chaos reign in Florida, defense lawyer and anti-capital punishment activist David Menschel said on Tuesday.
It echoes the 2002 supreme court decision, Ring v Arizona, that Arizona was breaching the constitution by allowing judges not juries to decide death or life.
“Those who support the death penalty in Florida have been on notice since Ring v Arizona that this day would come and they have stubbornly ignored the fact that the Florida system is unconstitutional,” said Menschel.
He said Florida taxpayers now face a huge bill and the details of legal reforms and who is affected by them could take years to figure out.
“This strikes at the heart of the Florida death penalty and it throws into doubt the sentence of hundreds there, maybe the bulk of people on death row,” Menschel said.
Timothy Hurst, who has been on death row since 2000, had already had his death sentence overturned once, after evidence of his mental state had been withheld, then reinstated. At the time the family of Cynthia Harrison spoke of their emotional turmoil.
Now Hurst’s life is back in the balance once again.
(Published by The Guardian - January 12, 2015)