A week after their decision in Hurst v. Florida, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in three cases with a similar topic to the one in Hurst: juries and the death penalty.
Death Penalty
12 Angry Men v. 1 Angry Judge
Who gets to decide who lives and who dies (by the death penalty)? If you recall, this is in a way the question that the Supreme Court addressed in Hurst v. Florida – a death penalty case from the state. Florida’s death penalty system allows a judge to skirt around a jury’s non-binding recommendation in the sentencing phase of the trial. But under the Constitution, who gets to decide the sentence? The jury or the judge?
Death in Florida: Predicting Hurst v. Florida
While Florida may seem to many to be a lawless state where crime is committed without penalty, the state’s justice system occasionally overcompensates and allows judges in trial courts to ignore a jury’s sentence recommendation. In 1998, Timothy Lee Hurst murdered his co-worker at a local Popeye’s as he tried to rob it. The jury in his trial voted to declare him guilty and, along a 7-5 margin, to recommend the death sentence.
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