TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected two challenges to a 2023 law that allows judges to impose death sentences without unanimous jury recommendations.
Ruling in cases from Duval and Bay counties, the Supreme Court backed the constitutionality of the law, which the Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved after Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz was sentenced to life in prison because a jury did not unanimously recommend death.
The Legislature in 2017 required unanimous jury recommendations after rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court about the death-penalty process. But the 2023 law undid the unanimity requirement, allowing inmates to be sentenced to death based on the recommendations of eight of 12 jurors.
Attorneys for Death Row inmates Michael James Jackson, who was convicted in the murders of a Duval County couple, and Michael H. Hunt, who was convicted in a Bay County murder, raised a series of arguments at the Florida Supreme Court alleging that the state’s sentencing system is unconstitutional.
But, for example, the Supreme Court in the Hunt case said the system does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
“Together, Florida’s death penalty provisions establish the constitutionally required safeguards to ensure that there are no ‘arbitrary, capricious, or freakish’ death sentences. … Thus, there is no support for the argument that the Eighth Amendment requires a unanimous jury recommendation,” Thursday’s main opinion in the Hunt case said, partially quoting from a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
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The main opinions in both cases were shared by Chief Justice Carlos Muniz and Justices Charles Canady, John Couriel, Jamie Grosshans, Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso. Justice Jorge Labarga wrote separate opinions, saying he concurred with the results of the main opinions because they were consistent with other court rulings over the past five years.
“However, I write to underscore that the 8-4 threshold renders Florida the absolute outlier among states that impose the death penalty,” Labarga wrote in the Jackson case. “Florida now has the lowest standard in the nation, requiring the fewest number of jurors to recommend the death penalty.”
Labarga wrote that Florida and Alabama are the only states with the death penalty that do not require unanimous jury recommendations. Alabama allows judges to impose death sentences after 10-2 recommendations.
The 2023 law did not affect the requirement that juries reach unanimous verdicts on the guilt of defendants — only the sentencing process that follows.
Florida long allowed death sentences to be imposed based on 7-5 jury recommendations. But that changed after decisions in 2016 by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court.
In January 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, ruled that the state’s death-penalty system was unconstitutional. The Florida Supreme Court in October 2016, in a similarly named case of Hurst v. State, interpreted and applied the U.S. Supreme Court ruling and said unanimous jury recommendations were required. The Legislature responded in 2017 by putting such a unanimous requirement in law.
After DeSantis took office in January 2019, he made appointments that created a conservative majority on the Florida Supreme Court. In 2020, the court reversed course and said unanimous jury recommendations were not needed.
The unanimous requirement, however, remained in law until after Cruz received a life sentence for murdering 17 students and faculty members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. The Republican-controlled Legislature in 2023 overwhelming passed a bill to eliminate the unanimity requirement
“The reason for the 8-4 legislation is clear: three members of a Broward County jury did not vote for death in the case of Nikolas Cruz, who pled guilty to multiple counts of murder in the Parkland school shootings,” Hunt’s attorneys wrote in a Supreme Court brief last year.
Hunt, 60, was sentenced to death in 2024 in the murder of Lexie Peck in 2019 at a Panama City home. The jury voted 10-2 to recommend the death penalty. Thursday’s Supreme Court opinion also upheld Hunt’s conviction.
Jackson, 43, was convicted in the 2005 murders of James and Carol Sumner, who were kidnapped from their Duval County home and buried alive in Georgia, according to Thursday’s opinion in the case. Jackson was initially sentenced to death, but the sentence was later vacated.
He was resentenced to death in 2023 after an 8-4 jury recommendation. The resentencing occurred after the 2023 law took effect eliminating the need for unanimity.
