ORLANDO – In a long-awaited decision, the Florida Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Legislature fumbled a rewrite of the state's death penalty statute earlier this year, meaning that Florida currently has no death penalty.
The court also ruled that Timothy Lee Hurst, whose death penalty prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to declare Florida's death penalty unconstitutional, must be given a new sentencing hearing.
The court was unequivocal on one overarching point: For a defendant to be given the death penalty, all 12 jurors must recommend it.
Those two rulings, released at the same time Friday morning, were a blow not just to the Florida Legislature but also to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had argued that the error identified by the U.S. Supreme Court was harmless.
Both of Friday's rulings were a consequence of one handed down on Jan. 12 by the U.S. Supreme Court. It ruled that Florida's death penalty was unconstitutional because it required a judge — not a jury — to decide whether a defendant should be put to death.
The case involved Hurst, a Pensacola man convicted of murdering his boss at a restaurant in Pensacola in 1998 with a box cutter, then putting her body in a freezer.
The state had argued that the error was harmless; in the January ruling Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court disagreed but left it to the Florida Supreme Court to hash out who, if anyone, was harmed by the law's wording.
The Florida Supreme Court on Friday answered that question, but only in part. The court ruled that Hurst was harmed, that his death sentence was invalid, and that he should get a new sentencing hearing.
How the ruling will affect other death row inmates was not immediately clear.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Scott's office wrote in an e-mail that his office was reviewing the ruling.
A spokesman for Bondi wrote the same thing, adding, "In the meantime Florida juries must make unanimous decisions in capital cases as to the appropriateness of the death penalty."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling prompted the Florida Legislature to rewrite the state's death penalty statute, and on March 7, Scott signed it.
But on Friday, the Florida Supreme Court threw it out. That ruling came in a separate case, one involving Osceola County death row inmate Larry Darnell Perry.
"The Act … is unconstitutional because it requires that only ten jurors recommend death as opposed to the constitutionally required unanimous, twelve-member jury," the court wrote. "Accordingly, it cannot be applied to pending prosecutions."
Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor or Hurst in January, the state halted all executions.
The Legislature approved the 10-2 jury recommendation despite warnings that it would not withstand a constitutional challenge. In May influential attorneys, including three former Florida Supreme Court judges, urged the state high court to commute sentences of all 390 people on death row to life in prison.
Before the January ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida judges were free to impose the death penalty if as few as seven jurors recommended it. In the Hurst case, jurors voted 7-5 in favor of the death penalty.
