Yesterday, Thursday May 22, Governor DeSantis signed HB 693: Aggravating Factors for Capital Felonies into law. This legislation unnecessarily expands Florida’s death penalty by adding an aggravating factor for sentencing for capital felonies if a victim of the capital felony was gathered with one or more persons for a school activity, religious activity, or public government meeting.
The new law would necessitate the “double counting” of aggravating factors, a violation of fair sentencing principles. This would duplicate existing provisions, resulting in a legal loophole that undermines fairness in the justice system. It creates an opportunity for inconsistencies and bias to creep into sentencing, further complicating an already flawed system.
The law requires the death penalty to be narrowly tailored and applied only in the most aggravated and least mitigated of first degree murder cases. Adding aggravators, especially in our current non-unanimous system, continues to undermine the constitutionality of Florida’s entire capital defense scheme.
Maria DeLiberato, former prosecutor, capital defense attorney, and Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty emphasizes the problems associated with expanding Florida’s death penalty in this way: “The current system is already prone to errors, wrongful convictions, and systemic inequalities. Instead of addressing the deep flaws in the death penalty, this bill simply creates more opportunities for injustice, making it more likely that innocent individuals could face irreversible consequences. Florida has 30 death row exonerees—more than any other state—and this bill makes it likely that innocent individuals will continue to be wrongfully convicted.”