DeSantis signs bill ending unanimous death penalty requirement after Parkland verdict backlash

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill ending the state’s requirement of a unanimous jury recommendation for a death sentence in a capital felony case.

“Today, I signed legislation ensuring the victims of the most heinous crimes get justice. 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 on Twitter, sharing a photo of the bill signing.

The move comes after the state received backlash when a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous agreement to recommend a death sentence for the Parkland school shooter last November.

DeSantis — considered a possible 2024 contender for the presidency — signed Florida Senate Bill 450 on Thursday, which brings the requirement down from unanimity of all 12 jurors to the agreement of eight jurors for the recommendation of a death sentence.

“If the jury has recommended a sentence of … Death, and at least eight jurors recommend a sentence of death, after considering each aggravating factor found by the jury and all mitigating circumstances, may impose a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or a sentence of death,” according to the bill text. 

The court, though, can impose a death sentence only if the jury unanimously finds at least one aggravating factor beyond a reasonable doubt. 

If fewer than eight jurors recommend a death sentence, the court would have to go instead with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, according to the bill summary. 

Nikolas Cruz, who killed 14 students and three staff members in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was sentenced to life in prison after the jury failed to reach unanimous agreement on a death sentence.

The ACLU of Florida decried DeSantis’s signing of the bill as “a dark day in Florida history.”

“Florida already has the highest number of death row exonerations in the country,” Tiffani Lennon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement. “With this bill and others, Florida is rapidly widening the net of who will be sent to death row with absolutely no consideration for the flaws that will inevitably lead to the harm of more innocent people.”

Florida now has “the lowest threshold for death sentencing in the country,” according to the group.