Tallahassee—Florida is one of five states that regularly uses the death penalty — and in 2023 the state stood out for its efforts to increase and expand the use of capital punishment. The state’s moves to resume executions after three years, to lower the bar for juries to recommend death sentences and to expand the crimes eligible for death put Florida at the forefront of the issue nationally. A recent report from the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that studies capital punishment, said Florida was responsible for a nationwide increase in the number of executions carried out this year. The state executed six people in 2023, second only to Texas, which had eight executions.
In the spring, lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis changed state law so juries don’t have to be unanimous to recommend the death penalty. The new minimum is a vote of 8-4 for death. Lawmakers also passed a bill making child sex abuse offenses eligible for the death penalty, a change that contradicts U.S. and Florida Supreme Court precedent. Prosecutors in Florida’s 5th Judicial Circuit this month filed the first such charges, and DeSantis has said they have his “full support.”
All of this occurs as support for the death penalty among the public has waned, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The renewed push for capital punishment makes Florida “the most extreme death penalty state in the nation,” said Maria Deliberato, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Deliberato said Florida’s renewed emphasis on capital punishment is likely related to “the governor’s presidential aspirations,” along with reaction to the 2022 verdict for the gunman responsible for killing 17 students and teachers at a Parkland high school. A jury in that case split 9-3 in favor of the death penalty, so the gunman received a life sentence.
When the governor signed the bill lowering the jury threshold, Hunter Pollack, the brother of slain high school senior Meadow Pollack, thanked DeSantis for the legislation. “While we cannot go back and change the past, we can ensure that no community will ever have to endure the injustice and pain that we did when the Parkland shooter did not receive the death penalty,” Pollack said earlier this year in a statement. Jury vote changes Florida instituted a unanimous jury requirement in 2017 based on the ruling of the state Supreme Court. But the court, which became more conservative after DeSantis appointed new justices, later reversed course.
In a January speech to Florida sheriffs, DeSantis expressed disappointment at the Parkland verdict and suggested that a vote of eight for the death penalty should be the minimum. The Legislature responded by passing bills that lowered the threshold. The new law makes Florida one of only two states to not require a unanimous jury. The only other, Alabama, requires 10 jurors.
The change has created uncertainty in Florida courts, with prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges trying to figure out how to handle ongoing cases that occurred when the requirement was unanimous. One case, in Volusia County, was in the midst of a trial this spring when the law changed. Judges in other ongoing cases have offered varying opinions about which standard should apply. In the Volusia case, an appeals court said 8-4 was fine. In Polk County, a judge this summer ruled that the change could not apply to an ongoing death penalty case and that a unanimous jury was still required. A 2006 study published in the Washington and Lee University Law Review included findings that showed juries tend to take longer and their deliberations are more meaningful when all must agree on the death penalty. The lowered standard, some believe, might mean more death verdicts.
“I certainly think we’re going to see an uptick in death sentences,” said Allison Miller, a criminal defense attorney and death penalty opponent, who in 2022 ran to be Pinellas-Pasco state attorney. Across the state, a handful of cases have gone to trial under the new 8-4 law, with varying results. Condemned to death in 2007 on a non-unanimous vote for his role in a Jacksonville double murder, Michael James Jackson won a new penalty hearing after the law changed to require unanimity. He was poised to go again before a jury when the law shifted back to 8-4. His case went forward under the new law, with a jury again voting 8-4 for death.
This year the state’s death row saw five new arrivals. Only one of them — Joseph Zieler in Lee County — had a jury that was less than unanimous. Zieler, convicted in the long-unsolved 1990 murders of a 12-year-old girl and her mother, was the only one of the five to go to trial under the new 8-4 law. His jury voted 10-2 for the death penalty. Two others sentenced to death this year offered little resistance in the face of capital punishment.
Steven Lorenzo, who represented himself in a Hillsborough County double-murder case, chose to plead guilty and forgo a jury sentencing, asking a judge to give him the death penalty. Steven Wolf, convicted in the rape and murder of a woman in the Florida Keys, told a court he wanted no evidence presented on his behalf that would weigh against a death sentence. His lawyers conveyed to a judge Wolf’s words that he would rather be “put to sleep” than spend the rest of his life in prison. His jury unanimously recommended death. Those who argued against Florida’s tilt toward a looser death penalty threshold point out that Florida has the most death row exonerees in the nation, with 30. Most of those were sentenced to death on jury votes that were not unanimous.
New executions Florida’s six executions and Texas’ eight accounted for more than half the nation’s 24 total executions this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, six more than last year’s 18. Executions overall have declined since the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the annual totals typically topped more than 60. They peaked at 98 executions in 1999. Florida’s six executions were the most in a year since 2014. It also was the first time in three and a half years that the state had put anyone to death. Donald Dillbeck became the first to be executed when DeSantis signed his death warrant in January.
Dillbeck was condemned in 1991 for the fatal stabbing of a woman in Tallahassee. He was one of four people executed this year — along with Louis Gaskin, Duane Owen and Michael Zack — whose death sentences resulted from non-unanimous jury votes. James Barnes, executed in August for a 1988 Brevard County murder, waived a jury vote in his case and asked to be sentenced to death. Only Darryl Barwick, executed in May for a 1986 Bay County stabbing, was sentenced based on a unanimous jury vote.
Source:
miamiherald.com, Dan Sullivan, Romy Ellenbogen, December 26, 2023
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