ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A Florida Supreme Court decision involving the death penalty has thrown between 100 to 150 cases into legal limbo, experts say. On Thursday, the court said it erred in 2016 when it ruled a jury must be unanimous in deciding a defendant convicted of murder should be sentenced to death. A day later, lawyers and anti-death penalty advocates were scrambling to determine what this means for existing cases that are in the resentencing phase. “No one knows how broadly the court will attempt to apply it,” said Robert Dunham of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. “And there are serious constitutional issues for all of the cases for which relief is being taken away.” Since the 2016 ruling, dozens of death row inmates who had been sentenced to die with nonunanimous jury decisions were granted new sentencing hearings. Dunham's group has identified 147 such cases, but it's unclear whether all will be subject to yet another r...
Striving for a World without Capital Punishment