Supremes Grant Cert to Constitutional Challenge to Florida's Death Penalty Scheme

This wikilog article is a draft, it was not published yet.

by: Ryan • March 9, 2015 • no comments

The case is Hurst v. Florida.

Issue: (1) Whether the Florida Supreme Court correctly held that the jury in a death penalty case does not have a constitutional obligation to render a verdict in the penalty phase of whether the defendant is mentally retarded or not when evidence has been presented to support such a conclusion; and (2) whether the Supreme Court of Florida has correctly concluded that this Court’s decision in Ring v. Arizona (1) has no applicability to Florida’s death sentencing scheme generally; (2) that specifically it does not require the jury’s recommendation of death to be unanimous; (3) that the jury’s findings of aggravating factors need not be unanimous; (4) that the jury has no role in determining the factual issue of the defendant’s mental retardation; and (5) that the lack of unanimity does not offend our evolving standards of decency as required by the Eighth Amendment.

The SCOTUSblog analysis is here. It includes this notable sentence.

In agreeing to rule on the case, the Court rewrote the question it will consider in an apparent attempt to simplify it: whether Florida’s approach to death sentencing violates either the Sixth Amendment or the Eighth Amendment “in light of this Court’s decision in Ring v. Arizona.”