Florida Supreme Court dismantled death penalty review

Republican Party-appointed judges to the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a nearly 50-year-old precedent that required the court to ensure the proportionality of the death penalty when compared to other cases.

In a 5-1 vote, the court concluded that adding the 2002 compliance clause to the state constitution had made the precedent for the court’s mandatory proportionality review “erroneous”, stating that it “should be subject to our constitution.” The clause stipulates that the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment “must be interpreted in accordance with the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States interpreting the prohibition on cruel and extraordinary punishment stipulated in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

According to the ruling, since the US Supreme Court has held that a review of the comparative proportionality of death sentences is not required under the Eighth Amendment, it cannot be required under the Florida Constitution.

“The only legitimate source for state law for the review of comparative proportionality was the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment found in Article 1, Section 17 of the Florida Constitution – before the conformity clause was added to this provision in 2002,” the order said. “Post-match clause, we have incorrectly continued to apply the state law requirement for a comparative proportionality review and have incorrectly written this requirement in our Rules of Procedure governing the scope of our appeal review.”

The order also ridiculed previous court decisions that upheld mandatory review based on precedent after adding the matching clause, saying that judges should never allow the practice to continue.

The order stated: “We cannot judicially reformulate the state’s laws or constitution to demand a proportional comparative review that is not required by its text.” “Nor can we ignore our constitutional obligation to match the precedent of our respect for the Florida Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment with the precedent of the Eighth Amendment of the Supreme Court by demanding a comparative proportionality review that the Supreme Court decided that the Eighth Amendment does not do so.”

Judge Jorge Laparga, the only Democrat appointed to the court, lodged a stern opposition, accusing the majority of “dismantling reasonable guarantees” by eliminating a core component of the jurisprudence of the death penalty.

“Today, the majority are abandoning the nearly fifty-year-old pillar of our mandatory review of direct appeal cases. As a result, this court is no longer required to review death sentences to ensure they are proportionate,” Labarga wrote. “I cannot strongly object to this decision, which severely undermines the reliability of this court’s decisions on direct appeal and, more broadly, the jurisprudence of the death penalty in Florida.”

La Barga has also criticized majority logic, arguing that the proportionality review is “completely consistent” with the Eighth Amendment and the US Supreme Court precedent.

He wrote, “I do not agree with the majority logic that since the Supreme Court does not explicitly require a review of proportionality, the Florida conformity requirement prohibits this.” The Supreme Court recognized the review of proportionality as an ‘additional safeguard’ against the same thing prohibited by the Eighth Amendment – the arbitrary imposition of death sentences.

Earlier this year, the Florida Supreme Court also overturned a 2016 ruling to allow a jury to impose the death penalty without unanimous consent. The decision made Florida only the second state to allow death sentences without consensus, along with Alabama.

Legal writer Mark Joseph Stern described the ruling as “an earthquake in the Florida criminal justice system”.

This decision is a huge deal. Florida’s Supreme Court has long reviewed death sentences for proportionality but five conservative justices decided they didn’t like this rule, so they threw it out the window. Florida earthquake criminal justice system.

– Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 29, 2020

Read the full decision below:

FL SC ordered the death penalty under the law and the crime on Scribd

[image via WPTV5]

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