(C) Florida Phoenix This story was originally published by Florida Phoenix and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Legislature says yes to require 8 jurors [1] ['Mitch Perry', 'More From Author', '- April'] Date: 2023-04-13 The state would no longer require a jury to rule unanimously to sentence someone to death under legislation approved by the House Thursday, putting Florida among a distinct minority of states around the country. The Senate passed the measure last month, and now the bill will go to Gov. Ron DeSantis desk for his consideration. The measure would require just eight, and not 12 jurors, to recommend a death sentence. The House vote was 80 to 30 on Thursday. The impetus for the change in law stemmed from the community outrage expressed after a Broward County jury voted 9-3 last fall to send gunman Nikolas Cruz – who killed 17 people in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland — to prison for the rest of his life rather than execute him. DeSantis was the most prominent official to call for a change in the law, shortly after the verdict was rendered last November. There are only three states that don’t require a unanimous jury verdict in sentencing someone to death. Alabama requires at least 10 jurors to render such a verdict, while Missouri and Indiana let a judge decide when there is a divided jury, according to the Associated Press. Pinellas County Republican Berny Jacques, a former prosecutor, was the bill sponsor in the House. He said the legislation is required to prevent an “activist juror” from blocking the imposition of a death sentence. He defined an activist juror as a juror “who decides to act outside the law and then places his own personal beliefs above what is required in the law.” In debate in on Thursday, House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell said that if that was the concern, why not file a bill that could refine the process when the jury is selected before a trial begins? Jacques responded that the proposal could be the subject of another bill, perhaps as soon as next session. “But regarding this bill, it addresses the issue of an activist juror on the penalty phase. This is what this bill is dealing with on the penalty phase in a capital offense trial,” he said. Florida previously allowed just a simple majority of 12 jurors to vote to execute someone on death row as recently as 2016. At that time, Florida was one of only three states that allowed a simple majority of jurors to recommend execution. That changed when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of Florida’s law in 2016. The Legislature then changed the law to require a 10-2 majority to recommend the death penalty, but the Florida Supreme Court ruled later in 2016 that such a measure would also violate the state’s Constitution. The Legislature then came back in 2017 and voted to require a unanimous jury decision to invoke a death sentence on an inmate. The measure passed 37-0 in the state Senate, and 112-3 in the House. Critics have noted that Florida has historically had a turbulent history with the use of capital punishment. The state has had 30 exonerations from death row, the most in the nation, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. “Florida gets it wrong a lot,” said Pinellas and Hillsborough County Democrat Michele Rayner-Goolsby, a criminal defense attorney. “We have not even proven to get this right and yet we want to have a lower threshold for which I think will impact more people.” Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an organization that opposes the death penalty, has noted that the vast majority of those exonerees were either sentenced to death by non-unanimous juries or sentenced to death by judges who rejected a jury’s recommendation of a life sentence and imposed death instead. The vote came shortly after the House had debated for hours on a bill that would ban abortion in Florida after just six weeks of pregnancy, something noted by Miami-Dade County Democrat Ashley Gantt, also a criminal defense attorney. “We just spent seven hours on a bill, and everybody talked about the importance of life. So why are we here now in this bill saying that state sanctioned murder via the death penalty is okay and we only need eight people to decide that?” she asked. But Jacksonville Republican Dean Black questioned those who said that this would be a tough vote. “For too long in Florida, the conscience of Floridians has been suffocated under an onerous and unjust burden and with your vote today, that burden will be lifted and the collected conscience of Floridians will be able to be righteously and justly again be expressed,” he said. 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