Florida's new death penalty law found unconstitutional.

Addressing both the Sixth and Eighth amendments, the Florida Supreme Court declared the state's death penalty sentencing scheme unconstitutional, requiring unanimous jury votes to recommend the ultimate penalty.

In a 5-2 decision on October 14, in Hurst v. Florida (SC12-1947), the court held that the Legislature did not go far enough in repairing Florida's death penalty sentencing scheme.

In Hurst, in January 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court found Florida's death penalty sentencing process unconstitutional because it failed to require the jury, rather than the judge, to find the facts necessary to impose the death sentence and the jury's advisory recommendation for death was "not enough." The U.S.S.C. invalidated the state's death penalty law that allowed a judge to override a jury's recommendation for life and impose death instead, saying it violates a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.

At Hurst's trial, the jury recommended death by a 7-to-5 vote.

Faced with this constitutional emergency, Florida lawmakers worked at repairing the death penalty sentencing scheme. After wrangling back and forth, the Senate compromised on its original fix of unanimity, and went along with the House, which had first wanted to up the simple majority jury recommendation vote to 8-4. In the end, Florida's new death penalty law required a 10-2 jury vote to recommend death during the penalty phase of a first-degree murder trial. The new law also said judges could no longer override the jurors' recommended sentence of life and impose death instead.

Eleven years ago, in Steele (921 So. 2d 538, 548), the Florida Supreme Court had urged the Legislature to require at least some unanimity by the jury in capital penalty proceedings.

Now the Florida Supreme Court has gone from only urging to requiring unanimity, in order to remove Florida from its status as an outlier as one of only three states that does not require a unanimous jury recommendation for death.

"By requiring unanimity in a recommendation of death in order for death to be considered and imposed, Florida will achieve the important goal of bringing its capital sentencing laws into harmony with the direction of society reflected in all these states and with federal law," the majority said in the Eighth Amendment portion of the 89-page opinion, dealing with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's concurring opinions in Ring and Hurst that dealt with "evolving standards of decency" and cruel and...