TALLAHASSEE, Florida – Yesterday, in a hasty fashion that was devoid of any opportunity for open communication, the Florida legislature passed a sweeping immigration bill. The bill includes a blatantly unconstitutional provision regarding the death penalty, and directs that a court “shall sentence a defendant who is an unauthorized alien and who is convicted or adjudicated guilty of a capital felony to a sentence of death.”
The legislature released the language of the bill just ten minutes before the Senators started discussing the bill and only after the bill made it out of committee, which all but eliminated any opportunity for public comment.
Legislators championing the bill are touting this as an “automatic” and “mandatory” death penalty for non-citizens who commit capital crimes in Florida.
Of course, a “mandatory” or “automatic” death penalty is clearly unconstitutional, and has been declared so across the nation for nearly 50 years. This is because the ultimate punishment of death, if a state chooses to seek it, can only be imposed after an individualized proceeding.
This was not new information to the legislature. Senator Randy Fine proclaimed in session yesterday: “In fact in this legislature we have chosen to pass things that we KNEW were unconstitutional at the time we passed them because we believed the Supreme Court would change their minds.”
Maria DeLiberato, Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty says:
“While Governor DeSantis has indicated he will veto this version of the bill, it is clear that both he and the Florida legislature intend to make immigration a priority this session. The broader concern is that our lawmakers are signaling their willingness to waste the State of Florida’s limited criminal justice resources defending unenforceable laws in favor of making political statements about the death penalty, instead of focusing on meaningful ways to strengthen Florida’s communities and make them safer.”
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FADP is a Florida-based, state-wide organization of individuals and groups working together to end the death penalty in Florida. Our network includes dozens of state and local groups and thousands of individual Floridians, including murder victims’ family members and other survivors of violent crime, law enforcement professionals, families of the incarcerated, and death row exonerations.