Death penalty for child rapists bill gets bipartisan support in Florida Legislature

The legislation would challenge existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

A bill that would challenge existing Supreme Court precedent by allowing the death penalty for people who sexually batter young children moved through its first committee in the Florida Senate with a unanimous vote Monday.

The bill challenges a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Kennedy v. Louisiana, that determined the death penalty could not be applied for the rape of a child, saying it was a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Currently, the application of the death penalty for any case other than murder is unconstitutional. But the Florida bill, SB 1342, says that the 2008 case and a 1981 Florida Supreme Court case were “wrongly decided and an egregious infringement of the states’ power to punish the most heinous of crimes.”

The bill is a bipartisan effort. Republican Sen. Jonathan Martin of Fort Myers introduced the legislation with Democratic Senate leader Lauren Book of Plantation. Similar legislation, HB 1297, has been filed in the House.

Book has been outspoken about her own experience as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, and she runs a charity organization focused on childhood sex abuse prevention.

During the committee meeting, Book’s father, lobbyist Ron Book, made an emotional appeal to the committee members, saying sex crimes against children were “so heinous, so violent, so horrific.”

“On behalf of those who will never be able to say ‘thank you’ for this bill, this is the right thing to do,” Ron Book said.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court only explicitly ruled out the death penalty for all nonmurder cases in 2008, no one had been executed for any crime other than murder in the U.S. since 1964, according to a Senate staff analysis.

Many states had not sought the death penalty for individuals charged with crimes other than murder because of a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled the death penalty unconstitutional for the rape of an adult.

Florida has a law on the books that designates sexual battery of a child under 12 as a capital felony, but the statute has been effectively moot because of the court rulings.

Martin said he is pushing the challenge because he believes that the rape of a child is worse than some murder cases, and he hopes having the ability to apply the death penalty in those cases will be a deterrent.

“Ultimately, if you look at the court’s makeup from 2008, it has changed significantly,” Martin said. “I think the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court believes that states should have more of a say in decisions like criminal justice that were originally left to the states under the U.S. Constitution.”

The idea of expanding capital punishment has also been a push of Gov. Ron DeSantis. In January, DeSantis announced an idea to reduce the number of jurors required to implement the death penalty and a proposal to expand capital punishment to child sexual battery.

The bill heard Monday would require eight or more jurors to vote in favor of the death penalty, instead of the current requirement for a unanimous jury. It would make Florida one of only two states with a nonunanimous jury requirement. Alabama currently has a 10-2 requirement. (Another bill, SB 450, moving through the Legislature also proposes to lower the jury threshold in capital cases to a minimum of eight jurors in favor.)

Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood, said he thinks the legislation sets up an easy Supreme Court win for the governor ahead of the 2024 election, in which DeSantis is widely expected to run for president. But Pizzo said that shouldn’t be the focus of the discussion of the bill.

“You are a far more depraved individual, in my experience, to touch a kid than you are to shoot somebody,” Pizzo said.

Unlike Florida’s death penalty sentencing plan for murder cases, the proposed legislation would only allow capital punishment for child sexual battery if jurors unanimously find there are two aggravating factors to the crime, instead of only one. Aggravating factors include things like whether the perpetrator used a firearm, whether they were a felon on probation and whether the victim was especially vulnerable because of a disability.

“As we were talking to other senators, they wanted to make sure that this penalty was reserved for the worst of the worst,” Martin said.

Source: tampabay.com, Romy Ellenbogen, March 21, 2023

_____________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW US ON:

TELEGRAM

TWITTER

CONTACT: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

South Carolina executes Mikal Mahdi

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.

Lethal Injection, Electric Chair, or Firing Squad? An Inhumane Decision for Death Row Prisoners

South Carolina resumed executions with the firing squad killing of Brad Sigmon last month. Mikal Madhi’s execution date is days away. The curtain shrieked as it was yanked open to reveal a 67-year-old man tied to a chair. His arms were pulled uncomfortably behind his back. The red bull’s-eye target on his chest rose and fell as he desperately attempted to still his breathing. The man, Brad Sigmon, smiled at his attorney, Bo King, seated in the front row before guards placed a black bag over his head. King said Sigmon appeared to be trying his best to put on a brave face for those who had come to bear witness.

I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

Arizona | The cruelty of isolation: There’s nothing ‘humane’ about how we treat the condemned

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog