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Capital punishment in Florida


Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Florida.

Since 1976, the state has executed 93 convicted murderers, all at Florida State Prison. As of January 28, 2017, 383 offenders are awaiting execution.

Florida performed its last pre-Furman execution in 1964 (Sie Dawson). After the Supreme Court of the United States struck down all states' death penalty procedures in the Furman v. Georgia ruling, essentially ruling the imposition of the death penalty at the same time as a guilty verdict unconstitutional, Florida was the first state to draft a newly written statute on August 12, 1972.

Florida performed the first involuntary execution after the Supreme Court, in the 1976 case Gregg v. Georgia, permitted the death penalty once more. John Arthur Spenkelink was electrocuted on May 25, 1979.

In 1989, it executed notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.

In Florida, murder can be punished by death if it involves one of the following aggravating factors:

Florida statutes also provide the death penalty for capital drug trafficking and capital sexual battery, but the death penalty for the latter crime is no longer constitutional since the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Louisiana. No one is on death row in the United States for drug trafficking.

On June 14, 2013, Governor Rick Scott signed the Timely Justice Act of 2013. The law is designed to overhaul and speed up the process of capital punishment. It creates tighter time frames for a person sentenced to death to make appeals and post-conviction motions and imposes reporting requirements on case progress.

In Hurst v. Florida (January 2016), the United States Supreme Court struck down part of Florida's death penalty law, saying it was not sufficient for a judge to determine the aggravating facts to be used in considering a death sentence. Under Florida law, the jury made a recommendation to the judge, with a finding by majority vote, and the judge separately determined aggravating facts other than what the jury proposed. The Court ruled that Florida's law violated the Sixth Amendment guaranteeing a jury trial. It was unclear whether the ruling would apply retroactively to current condemned men.


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