They say juries' recommendations should be required to be unanimous. The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida Supreme Court urged the Legislature on Wednesday to require that juries be unanimous in recommending death sentences or at least in deciding what aggravating factors support the ultimate penalty.
The high court appealed to lawmakers in an opinion that decided several procedural issues stemming from a pending case involving the murder of a Pasco County sheriff's deputy.
"The bottom line is that Florida is now the only state in the country that allows the death penalty to be imposed even though the penalty-phase jury may determine by a mere majority vote both whether aggravators exist and whether to recommend the death penalty," Justice Raoul Cantero wrote for the court.
Cantero added that lawmakers need to ask themselves whether Florida should remain the only exception.
Only judges can impose death sentences in Florida, but they are required by law to give great weight to recommendations from 12-member juries. It takes a vote of 7-5 or greater to recommend death in a first-degree murder case. The only alternative is life in prison without parole.
Cantero noted many scholars and courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court in death penalty decisions since the mid-1970s, have concluded that unanimous verdicts are important to ensure "reasoned judgments."
"The requirement of a unanimous verdict can only assist the capital sentencing jury in reaching such a reasoned decision," Cantero wrote in the decision.
The justices voted 7-0 on that issue and in ruling that judges can require prosecutors to tell defendants and their lawyers before trial the aggravating factors they intend to prove in the penalty phase of a capital case.
They split 5-2, however, in ruling that judges cannot require that a majority of jurors agree to each aggravating factor supporting a death recommendation. Such factors include a murder that is particularly heinous, atrocious or cruel, one committed for financial gain or if a police officer is killed while on duty.
Chief Justice Barbara Pariente and Justice Harry Lee Anstead dissented on that point. The majority found that requiring a majority vote on each aggravating factor is not required by the U.S. Supreme Court or included in existing Florida law.
The opinion came in the case of Alfredie Steele Jr., 21, who is charged with first-degree murder in the June 1, 2003, killing of sheriff's Lt. Charles "Bo" Harrison, 57. The officer was gunned down in a sniper attack outside a Trilacoochee nightclub.
His trial has been on hold pending a ruling on the two procedural issues.
In another death penalty case, the high court unanimously rejected an appeal from Franklin Delany Floyd, 62, for the 1989 murder of 18-year-old Cheryl Ann Commesso, who was photographed in his mobile home as she was dead or near death.
Commesso had been dancing at the Mons Venus club in Tampa before she disappeared in 1989. Her skeletal remains were found six years later along Interstate 275 in the Tampa Bay area. Floyd was serving a 57-year federal prison term for a 1994 kidnapping in Oklahoma when charged with the murder.
About the same time as Commesso's remains were found, the photos were discovered hidden above the gas tank of a pickup truck Floyd had stolen.
