"Miami federal judge rules Florida’s death penalty unconstitutional,' is the Miami Herald report written by David Ovalle.
A Miami federal judge ruled Wednesday that the way Florida courts mete out the death penalty is unconstitutional because juries — not judges — should be the ones to spell out which details about the crime justify execution.
U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez ordered that Paul H. Evans, convicted in a 1991 murder-for-hire case in Vero Beach, must receive a new sentencing hearing.
The ruling, likely to be argued in appellate courts for years, does not strike down Florida’s capital-punishment law. But it could force lawmakers to change the statute, and could give recent convicts new avenues for appeal, legal experts say.
“If the case survives appeals, the Florida Legislature is going to have to modify the law to allow jurors to explain why someone deserves the death penalty,” said Miami attorney Terry Lenamon, founder of the Florida Capital Resource Center, a support group for death-penalty defense cases.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, through a spokeswoman, said Wednesday that her office would request a rehearing and appeal the decision.
Martinez was appointed to the federal bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
Legal scholars say Martinez’s ruling marks the first time a Florida judge has overturned a death sentence under the U.S. Supreme Court case Ring v. Arizona. In that 2002 ruling, the court held that defendants are entitled to have juries decide on whether any “aggravating factors” in a crime justify enhanced punishment.
And:
Florida is one of the few states that allow juries to issue death penalty recommendations that are not unanimous. Here, 12-person juries recommend by majority vote whether someone convicted of first-degree murder should be executed. But state jurors do not have to check off on an instruction sheet which reasons contributed to their decision, as jurors are required to do in the rare death penalty case in federal court.
Trial judges in Florida’s state courts have authority to override jury recommendations, although in death penalty cases, they rarely do.
Judge Martinez, in Wednesday’s ruling, said there was no way to know if all nine of the jurors in Evans’ case who voted for death were swayed by the same aggravating factors as the judge. He conceded that jury unanimity may not be constitutionally necessary, but wrote: “… It cannot be that Mr. Evans’ death sentence is constitutional when there is no evidence to suggest that even a simple majority found the existence of any one aggravating circumstance.”
The Palm Beach Post reports, "Federal judge strikes down Florida's death penalty," by Daphne Duret and Jane Musgrave.
In a decision hailed by defense attorneys and civil libertarians, a federal judge in Miami has struck down Florida's death penalty saying the way it is applied flies in the face of the U.S. Constitution.
"It has been a long time coming," said Coral Springs attorney Bill Matthewman. "Many of us felt for years that Florida death penalty statute was unconstitutional and were just waiting for a case to confirm it."
In his 94-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez this week repeatedly cited a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision as a basis for his finding that Florida's law is fatally flawed.
In that decision, that struck down Arizona's death penalty, the Supreme Court held that a jury must agree on certain aggravating factors to justify their decision that a person should be put to death. However, in Florida, jurors aren't required to make such a finding.
"This cannot be reconciled with Ring," Martinez wrote, referring to the landmark Supreme Court case.
Defense attorneys said forcing jurors to agree on aggravating factors isn't simply perfunctory. They are at the heart of constitutional rights.
"It is the law in this country that not everyone who commits murder is eligible for the death penalty," Matthewman said. "It's only the worst of the worst."
"Federal Judge Rules Florida Death Penalty Procedure Is Unconstitutional," by Debra Cassens Weiss for the ABA Journal.
In Florida state courts, 12-person juries can recommend a death sentence by majority vote, and there is no requirement that jurors cite which aggravating factors swayed their decision, the stories say. Evans' death sentence can't be constitutional, Martinez wrote, when “there is no evidence to suggest that even a simple majority found the existence of any one aggravating circumstance."
The ruling in Evans v. McNeil is available in Adobe .pdf format. Earlier coverage of the ruling is at the link.
More on Ring v. Arizona, the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, is via Oyez.
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