Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch (pictured) ruled on May 9 that Florida’s new death sentencing law violates the state’s constitution. Ruling in the case of Karon Gaiter, who is awaiting a capital trial, Judge Hirsch said new law’s requirement that at least 10 jurors agree to the death penalty before a defendant can be sentenced to death violated Florida’s constitutional requirement that all jury verdicts must be unanimous. “For the ultimate decisions made within the judicial branch of government—guilty or not guilty, life or death—majority rule is insufficient,” Hirsch wrote. “We do ask, indeed we insist, that the decisions of capital juries be, in some sense, perfect; for they are, in some sense, final. We ask, indeed we insist, that they reflect the will of all rather than the will of the few or even of the many…. However outrageous a crime, however controversial a case, as Floridians and Americans we … cannot accede, we will not accede, we have never acceded, to outcomes as to which no more can be said than that some jurors have spoken.” Hirsch wrote that the state’s previous death penalty statute, which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida, did not raise this constitutional question because the jury’s advisory penalty-phase sentencing recommendation “was, in effect, a straw poll” rather than a verdict. Hirsch’s decision comes as the Florida Supreme Court considers how Hurst will affect the nearly 400 death row prisoners sentenced under the previous sentencing scheme. The Miami-Dade state’s attorney’s office said it would appeal Hirsch’s ruling.
(D. Ovalle, “Judge says state death-penalty law is unconstitutional,” Miami Herald, May 9, 2016; J. Reedy, “Florida judge: New death penalty law unconstitutional,” Associated Press, May 9, 2016.) Read Judge Hirsch’s decision here. See Florida and Sentencing.
