Monday, January 13, 2003
Lives in the balance: Jury's death sentence should be unanimous
News-Journal editorial
Over recent years, Floridians have been confronted by a growing body of proof that the death penalty is deeply and irredeemably flawed.
But if this state's leaders are bound to pursue this arcane and unjust punishment, they must at the least insure it is reserved for only the most heinous murders.
A bill discussed last week in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee fails in its attempt to achieve that goal. Instead, it places an untenable burden on the ordinary people called to judge their peers, without giving them the security of knowing the state has met the highest burden of proof.
Under Florida's current law, first-degree murder trials are divided into two parts. In the first part, 12-member juries determine guilt or innocence. This decision -- like any other verdict -- must be unanimous.
In the second part, known as the penalty phase, jurors hear evidence of aggravating and mitigating elements of the crime and the defendant's life. They then vote on a recommended sentence, a vote in which the majority prevails. The judge is required to give that recommendation great weight, but is not bound to follow the jury's decision.
A Senate staff analysis of inmates sentenced to death from 1990 to 1999 shows that judges overrrode the jury's decision of life in prison 34 times.
That's in direct contrast to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, which holds that death sentences can only be determined by juries and only by unanimous vote. That decision, announced in the case of Ring vs. Arizona, is the basis of multiple challenges to Florida's sentencing laws. So far, the law has held. But the Florida Supreme Court heard several oral arguments this week on death-penalty cases based on Ring, indicating that the court has not yet made up its mind on the total implications of the Arizona case.
The Ring decision makes sense. It holds that "murder punishable by death" is clearly a different, and worse, crime than murder punishable by life in prison.
Unfortunately, SB 120 stops short of the real reforms needed to meet the standard set by the Ring case.
The bill does require that juries, not judges, must determine death sentences. But it stops short of requiring unanimous votes. That's significant. The Senate analysis shows that -- of the 484 death sentences in the decade studied -- only 77 were the product of unanimous jury votes. In 64 cases, the jury recommendation was a slender 7-5.
It's not enough. Levying death sentences on the basis of a majority vote trivializes one of the gravest decisions a jury can make. It increases the likelihood that peer pressure, not the weight of the evidence, will influence votes. Perhaps most dangerously, it makes it far more likely that individual prejudices and fears will come into play.
If prosecutors feel a defendant truly deserves the ultimate penalty, they should be able to convince 12 jurors of that fact. Falling short of that goal, it's hard to see how the death penalty is justified -- if it can be justified at all.
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