Posted by James Awad.
Florida’s death penalty law has been slightly changed after their Supreme Court ruled that there needs to be unanimous support from the jury to sentence someone to death. This means that in Florida you now need ten or more jury member’s consent to use the death penalty. The issue had been raised by Timothy Hurst “a death row inmate whose appeal led lawmakers early this year to rewrite the state’s death penalty law”. He believed that the death penalty was a violation of his Eighth Amendment right. In light of the court’s decision the justices of Florida “also ordered that Mr. Hurst have a new sentencing hearing for his conviction for a 1998 murder in Escambia County, in the Florida Panhandle.”
There are about thirty states that still have capital punishment and most of them require that there be unanimous support by the jury. This highlights the movement toward eliminating the death penalty altogether in the United States. Many people do not agree with it and about twenty states have banned it such as New Jersey and New York. There are a large group of people who say that it violates your Eighth Amendment right which pertains to cruel and unusual punishment.
In Florida “The Florida Department of Corrections said Friday that the state was housing 385 prisoners who had been sentenced to death”. It seems that now that the law has changed, many of these men and women will receive retrials and most likely get their death penalties taken away. Most of these people, like Mr. Hurst, have been appealing and prolonging the process for years. In the case of Mr. Hurst, he had avoided the death penalty for more than fifteen years through appeals.
James is an accounting major at the Feliciano School of Business, Montclair State University.