Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Thursday that will no longer require juries agree unanimously to recommend death sentences, reducing the number of jurors need to recommend a death sentence to the lowest threshold of any state with capital punishment.
SB 450 reduces the number of jurors needed to recommend a death sentence from 12 to 8.
The bill was prompted by a jury’s decision last year to not hand the death penalty to Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz. A jury recommended Cruz receive a life sentence without the possibility of parole instead for the February 2018 shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Of the 12 jurors in Cruz’s trial, three voted against the death penalty.
The move left some family members of the victims disappointed and upset.
“A few months ago, we endured another tragic failure of the justice system. Today’s change in Florida law will hopefully save other families from the injustices we have suffered,” Ryan Petty, the father of Parkland victim Alaina Petty, said in a statement Thursday.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an anti-death penalty group, warned that the new law would be challenged immediately and could lead to more wrongful convictions.
“If one of the primary justifications for the death penalty is to provide solace and finality to victims, instituting this new unconstitutional statute almost certainly does the opposite,” FADP’s Director Maria DeLiberato, said in a statement. “This change is a return to Florida’s prior scheme – which the United States Supreme Court has already found unconstitutional – and which required nearly 100 new penalty phase trials. Many of those are still pending. This new law will be immediately challenged, and there will be extensive litigation, plunging the system – and victims’ families in…
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