An annual report put together by a national group that tracks the death penalty says Florida led the nation this year in imposing death sentences, a situation that appears to be linked to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ successful push to eliminate the requirement of a unanimous jury recommendation.
The Death Penalty Information Center, a group that says it has no position on the death penalty but is critical of how it carried out, reported that 26 people were sentenced to death in the United States in 2024.
Ten states sentenced people to death this year but just four — Alabama, California, Florida, and Texas — accounted for the majority. Florida led with seven death sentences, followed by six in Texas, four in Alabama, and three in California.
About one-third of the 26 new death sentences were imposed without a unanimous recommendation from a jury, including six in Florida and three in Alabama.
Florida’s death penalty law had undergone several revisions in the past two decades, including moving to a unanimous jury recommendation in the aftermath of rulings from both the U.S. Supreme Court and the state Supreme Court.
But DeSantis pushed to eliminate the unanimous requirement after a jury failed to recommend a death sentence for Nikolas Cruz, the shooter who killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018. DeSantis signed the measure, which allows a death sentence to be recommended by an 8-4 vote, in April 2023.
“Once a defendant in a capital case is found guilty by a unanimous jury, one juror should not be able to veto a capital sentence,” DeSantis said at the time. “I’m proud to sign legislation that will prevent families from having to endure what the Parkland families have and ensure proper justice will be served in the state of Florida.”
The Florida Supreme Court held oral arguments last week in the case of Michael James Jackson, who is challenging the constitutionality of the new law and is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. A jury recommended by an 8-4 vote that Jackson be sentenced to death.
Local and national organizations have argued that that lack of a non-unanimous jury recommendation violates the Eighth Amendment, which deals with cruel and unusual punishment, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which deals with due process and equal protection.
The Death Penalty Information Center reported that the number of new death sentences and executions was higher than in 2023 but remained substantially smaller than what it was 20 years ago, when there were 130 new death sentences and 59 executions.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the center, noted that a new poll suggests there could be a “steady decline of support in the future” for the death penalty because a majority of adults aged 18 to 43 now oppose it.
The center found that 25 executions had been carried out in the past year in nine states, including one in Florida — Loran Cole, for the 1994 murder of John Edwards, a Florida State University student who was camping with his sister in the Ocala National Forest.
–Christine Sexton, Florida Phoenix
