Florida taxpayers paying costs for a host of legal fights during Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tenure look certain to face more with a Senate panel defying a U.S. Supreme Court ruling by approving a measure making child rape subject to the death penalty.
The Republican governor, poised soon to announce his candidacy for his party’s presidential nomination, has called for the tougher standard. The Senate Rules Committee endorsed the move Tuesday, despite a warning that it will be found unconstitutional.
“Courtrooms must be a place for justice, and not vengeance,” said Aaron Wayt, who spoke against the bill (SB 1342) representing the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
But Sen. Lauren Book, a Plantation Democrat, a victim of child sexual abuse who founded the advocacy organization, Lauren’s Kids, said allowing capital punishment to be applied to sex crimes against children could be warranted.
“There’s no statute of limitations that a victim suffers. This is a life sentence that is handed down to young children,” Book said.
“I still deal with the very real lasting effects of this crime. It never goes away,” she said, adding, “I don’t get a chance to make it stop.”
SCOTUS turned back Louisiana law
In a 5-4 decision involving a Louisiana law in 2008, justices barred states from imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child, when the crime did not involve a child’s death. The court rules that applying the death penalty in such cases would amount to “cruel and unusual punishment.”
DeSantis, though, has said he thinks the current, conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court may be willing to revisit the earlier ruling and allow death penalty in child rape cases. DeSantis said he saw the death penalty as the “only appropriate punishment” for such crimes.
The bill allows a jury by a vote of at least 8-4 to recommend a death sentence for sexual battery on a child under age 12. The jury must find at least 2 aggravating factors present from a list included in the bill to reach that conclusion, but Wayt described what he saw as an inherent flaw in the proposal.
Among the factors, one would require the assault to be “heinous, atrocious or cruel.” Another factor states that the victim must be “especially vulnerable.” Wayt pointed out that the bill, itself, declares the crime of child sexual assault as heinous and inflicted on someone vulnerable.
As a result, he added, “Every person convicted of this crime is eligible for the death penalty.”
Longer, costlier process for victim
“This bill invites a longer, costlier process that the victim and their family will endure,” said Wayt, who told the committee that he, too, had been a victim of child sexual battery.
Similar legislation is moving forward in the House. And the Senate has already approved another DeSantis-sought measure that would reduce the state requirement that a death penalty be recommended unanimously by a jury.
In 2020, the state Supreme Court reversed course and said unanimous jury recommendations were not needed, although the law remains on the books.
Under this year’s legislation, at least 8 members of a 12-person jury would have to recommend a death sentence. The bill was proposed after a divided, 9-3 jury spared Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Crus from capital punishment in November.
The Parkland school shooter instead received a life sentence. The House also is expected soon to approve legislation setting the 8-4 jury standard.
Florida among a few
As he positions himself for a presidential run, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also is poised for more court fights over the death penalty.
Florida would join only three other states out of the 27 that impose the death penalty but do not require jury unanimity. DeSantis has already been moving forward with executions, with Louis Gaskin scheduled to die Wednesday for a 1989 double murder in Flagler County. [DPN:
Gaskin was executed on April 12, 2023]
He was recommended 8-4 for execution by a jury. Similarly, Donald Dilbeck, ordered executed in February by DeSantis for a 1990 Tallahassee murder, had received an 8-4 jury recommendation for death.
Dilbeck was Florida’s 1st execution in almost 4 years and the third set by DeSantis.
For the politically combative DeSantis, any legal challenge over his push to accelerate and expand the death penalty seems welcome as he is poised to launch his presidential run.
Florida taxpayers already have spent tens of millions of dollars on lawsuits during his time in office over lawsuits stemming from policies enacted ranging from abortion access, redistricting, elections measures, the state’s controversial anti-riot act, and a host of culture war clashes and fights over COVID-19 policies.
While expanding the death penalty to child rapists could bring the state attention before the U.S. Supreme Court, another measure this spring advancing and promoted by the governor would expand defamation law – intended to help prompt the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the famed New York Times v. Sullivan case from 1964.
DeSantis frequently targets what he derides as the “corporate media,” and eliminating protections contained in Sullivan could inspire more lawsuits against news organizations.
House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, acknowledged last month that the defamation bill is “designed to challenge current constitutional law, which we may do in other aspects, too.”
Source: Tallahassee Democrat, Staff, April 12, 2023
