This past April, Florida joined Alabama, Missouri, and Indiana to become one of only four states that do not require a unanimous jury decision in death penalty sentencing. Now, only 8 out of 12 jurors are needed to send a person to Florida’s death row.
Since 1973, Florida has exonerated 30 people—17 Black people, eight white people, and five Latino people—sentenced to death for all charges related to the wrongful convictions that had put them on death row. With Gov. Ron DeSantis using Florida as an incubator for U.S. authoritarianism, the risk of the state executing an innocent person has only increased.
Like many other things in this country, capital punishment is used as a political cudgel. While Americans across the political spectrum increasingly oppose this barbaric practice, whitelash to calls for justice have spurred proponents to wield their power. As MAGA Republicans fight their unsubtle culture war battles, efforts to enact jury verdicts that are not unanimous in death penalty cases are re-emerging, threatening to plunge us back into a dark chapter of our history and exacerbating systemic injustices.
A few years ago, Hunter offered this spot-on analysis of capital punishment in light of the country’s growing authoritarian movement that applies to Florida’s wannabe despot governor today:
Any state-sponsored execution, no matter how supposedly justified, is inherently political in nature, and by definition. It is the state doing the executing, and the state that has set the rules of who is to be killed and in what order. As we have seen, who is thought to be “deserving” of death shifts with political and cultural winds, but upon the ascendence of any authoritarian power in a nation, it shifts invariably to include the authoritarian’s own targets. And we have seen the glint of that here too as the “moderate” right became increasingly intolerant of policing the violent far-right and instead steadily shifted resources into pursuing anti-war protestors or the illusory demons of antifa.
The U.S. Constitution requires trials by jury to protect citizens from wrongful convictions. But juries do not guarantee justice. In Florida, 90% of death row exonerees were convicted by a jury that was not unanimous. Capital punishment is a biased, barbaric, and indefensible practice. We should do all we can to reduce fatal errors, not remove guardrails.
If you’re on Daily Kos’ email list, you’ve likely read at length about the fundamental deficiencies in the criminal legal system, from arrest to prosecution to incarceration. Poor and disabled people—primarily Black and brown people—endure systemic racism, ableism, and classism; misconduct by law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and prison officials; the use of junk science; and more.
Families of victims have become increasingly vocal about how capital punishment revictimizes them and how the state offers no support to process their trauma and grief. Taxpayers spend millions of dollars to maintain this ineffective, inhumane, and regressive practice, money that would be better spent on expanding access to trauma care for families of victims and on effective violence prevention measures.
However, it doesn’t end there. Media like the popular television series “Law & Order” (possibly the most effective propaganda in my lifetime) would have you believe that the appeals system is fair and easily accessed. Once you are convicted, there is very little recourse no matter how much new evidence is available, how much misconduct and incompetence is revealed, or how blatantly absurd the case may be. The criminal legal system works to keep people in the system, innocence be damned.
Former prosecutor Marty Stroud once supported the death penalty. That changed after he prosecuted Glenn Ford, who spent nearly 30 years on death row for a murder he didn’t commit. The New Orleans Gambit reported Stroud said the memory of Ford haunts him, “I hope when the time comes God has more mercy on me than I did on Mr. Ford. But I really don’t deserve it.”
The lack of unanimous juries in a death penalty verdicts resurrect Jim Crow-era governance when such laws were explicitly written to oppress Black Americans systematically. When considered in total, it’s hard to see executions as little more than legalized lynchings. The death penalty is among this nation’s most significant failures. We cannot make it easier to condemn a person to death.
Let’s keep it 100: Sometimes, the accused is guilty. It’s a cruel, stomach-churning reality that people are capable of awful things. The reasons behind the actions don’t excuse the harm. However, retribution should never be mistaken for justice.
When it comes to executions, any doubt is too much. To borrow from a John Fortescue quote from Coffin v. United States, “[O]ne would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally.” Capital punishment epitomizes the deep-seated flaws in our broken criminal legal system. Making it easier to condemn a person to death makes an already brutal system even more unjust. We can never make state-sponsored murder okay.
Ending capital punishment in the U.S. is an uphill battle, and we will lose more lives as we forge ahead. However, I believe we will end this barbaric practice in my lifetime. Lord (and voters), hear my prayer.
Add your name: Juries that are not unanimous in death penalty verdicts are wrong.
