Florida’s state government reached an agreement this week to overhaul the current death penalty law. The state now requires 10 out of 12 jurors to come to an agreement before serving the death penalty. Previously, Florida required only a majority vote. Now, the 395 people on death row in Florida are playing a new kind of waiting game.
Tallahassee was spurred into action in January when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state in Hurst v. Florida. The court ruled that the jury, rather than the judge, should be the one to come up with a reason to put someone on death row.
It would be fair to assume that if Florida insists on continuing the use of the death penalty, the state would at least do everything in its power to make sure it gets the process right.
Florida was one of the few states that could sentence someone to death without a unanimous jury decision. The jury was also not required to tell judge the way they thought the defendant should die. However, a judge could overturn the jury’s sentencing recommendation. According to the Supreme Court, the law violated several constitutional amendments.
Thus, Florida had to either change its law or abandon it. The Florida court will also need to decide which inmates are eligible for a new ruling. The court could also reverse every single sentence if it wanted to. However, Florida has a tight execution schedule. This schedule is required for it to be one of the most active states in employing the use of the death penalty.
The new law is an attempt to make it harder to wrongfully sentence someone to death. But it is unclear whether it will keep more innocent people off of death row. The new law also does not provide a real justification for continuing to use the death penalty in so many cases.
Florida, and the Supreme Court, need to re-look at the death penalty and the way it is used and potentially even abused.
The truth is that the death penalty is financially harder on the state and the victims’ families than it is on the person convicted. Unless, of course, the person convicted is innocent. Nearly 4% of the people sentenced to death in the United States are innocent.
Rather than writing new laws and looking for redemption in the court, the Florida government would be better served by abandoning the death penalty altogether. Doing so would save the state huge amounts of money in litigation fees. It would save Florida’s court from having to potentially re-examine 395 cases.
The Florida courts are particularly suffering from a lack of funding. A recent web project outsourced to a San Diego SEO firm cost half the annual budget.
It could even save the lives of potentially 15 people on death row, who, statistically speaking, might be innocent.
But ultimately, the death penalty must be reconsidered because murder rates are rising. It is time to stop refining an expensive punishment to fit the crime. Perhaps all the resources and effort used on rewriting these laws should be spent on preventing the crime in the first place.